[OPINION] Sear, kill, obliterate: On pyroclastic flows and surges
Apr 5, 2021 2:00 PM PHT
Kelvin S. Rodolfo
The following is the third in a series of excerpts from Kelvin Rodolfo's ongoing book project "Tilting at the Monster of Morong: Forays Against the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant and Global Nuclear Energy."
The most lethal of volcanic hazards that threaten the BNPP are pyroclastic flows. Unlike the volcanic landslides that Cojuangco was referring to which don’t go very far, pyroclastic flows can travel more than a hundred kilometers.
Some pyroclastic flows form out of a single large volcanic belch. Others happen when hot gases mixed with fragmental debris and blobs of lava gush violently high into the atmosphere. Pinatubo in 1991 flung up an eruption column that towered more than 19 kilometers above the ground.