Can lava melt people? (Mrs. Wood's 1st Grade Class, ages 5-6, Las Vegas, Nevada)

Lava is very dangerous and will burn people. You must be very cautious if you are around lava.

Has anyone ever survived volcano burns and has any of your team members suffered injuries? (Booker T., Racine, Wisconsin)

Yes - the most famous example being a prisioner in the gaol at St. Pierre on Martinque in the Caribbean. The eruption of 1902 from the nearby volcano of Mt. Pelee killed the whole population of the town except for the prisioner who was badly burned - but survived! I (David Hilton) had a little bit of lava (spatter) land on me at Kilauea volcano in Hawaii. It burned - and hurt!

Have you ever known any one,that has climbed a mountian and then it suddenly erupted? (Raymond Pugh Jr., Walden III Middle School, Racine, Wisconsin)

Many volcanologists have been caught out by eruptions which took place while they were on the volcanoes. In 1993 about 9 volcanologists were killed on Galeras Volcano (in Colombia) when an eruption suddenly occurred while they were inside the crater.

How many people die because of volcanoes each year? (Bob)

Difficult to say, probably in the hundreds to thousands (and I'm excluding fatalities due to earthquakes such as the recent ones in El Salvador and India).

How do you safeguard your health in and around the crater? Do
you carry personal sulfur dioxide meters or detectors? What are increasing danger warning signs? What's the indicator to get out of Dodge?

We always go into craters with experienced local experts - in this case Guillermo. Additionally, we use gas marks when gas concentrations are high - and once the sampling is over, we get out of Dodge quickly.

Being a geography student, and someone who has lived in Costa Rica for 2 years, I really enjoyed the information here. I've been to Volcan Irazu, and I know that there is a deep crater on the top, with a lake. Tourists are denied access to the "lakefront." As a part of the research, do you go down inside the crater at all? (Seth Dixon, BYU. Provo, Utah)

Yes, we go into the craters - but very carefully. In addition, we have experienced local guides with us (usually geologists) so they will have done these treks before and worked out the optimal routes. Please don't go down into the craters by yourselves, and respect the various warning signs which are posted everywhere.