EMO team heading to Anatahan

The Emergency Management Office has put together a team for an expedition to Anatahan to improve monitoring efforts on the island’s volcanic activity.

With only one of the three seismic stations still functional, the team’s focus will be to replace one of the stations and try to repair the other, according to U.S. Geological Survey’s Dr. Andy Lockhart, a geophysicist out of the Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Washington.

“What we’re doing right now is bolstering the monitoring effort on Anatahan,” Lockhart told the Saipan Tribune yesterday. “The eruptive activity since the beginning of January has taken out two of the three stations on Anatahan, leaving us with just one so what we’re going to do is try to put on a new station because we expect that one of those two stations that’s been destroyed is inaccessible.

Lockhart said the station located at the southern part of the island might be inaccessible and would be replaced because of its proximity to the erupting crater.

“I don’t know what’s happened there but I don’t think we’re going to get in to find out. That’s too close,” he said.

Another station located at the center of the island and high on the western rim of the crater would possibly be repaired depending on wind direction.

“If we get lucky with the wind, I think we might be able to get in there and fix it. I think the only problem there is if the wind is dropping the ash plume on the site…we won’t be able to go there,” Lockhart said.

The station will be brought to Saipan for repair before being returned to Anatahan.

Lockhart said the expedition is set for tomorrow as winds are forecasted to be from the south, which will blow the plume away from the western rim station.

The only station that still functions is located at the eastern part of the island.

Lockhart said the stations may have lost power due to ash covering its solar panels. This time around, batteries with a life span of one year will be added to ensure continuous monitoring despite the ash.

“So we’re doing a fundamental improvement to the monitoring by adding batteries that don’t require solar panels so that, if the eruption continues, and it sure looks like its going to be continuing for some unknown period, it drops ash on the solar panels and the batteries die. [But] with these new batteries, that won’t happen. We’ll be able to maintain monitoring throughout the eruptions despite the ash,” he said.

Equipment for the stations include a medal box with batteries, electronics, and radio that will relay data to Saipan. A sensor used to measure ground vibration will also be buried and a piece of pipe will be used for the antenna mast for the radio to send signals.

With the batteries, the stations will have two sources of power—including the solar panel.

Equipment for each stations, according to Lockhart, costs about $7,500.

“Every thing is pretty much set,” Lockhart said. “We’re doing some final tests. We’ve got the equipment set up [yesterday] to make sure it works…checked all the signal levels and made sure the connections are all connected. We’re going to take it apart again, put it in the helicopter, fly out and set it up.”

Locakhart said the team will take another trip to the island to complete the task. The date for the second trip is tentatively set for Monday.

Lockhart arrived Monday and will be on island for two weeks.

“We’ve got two days of work up there. There is stuff to do down here with electronics. We’re going to be setting up other tools to help us monitor the electronics. It’s more of building the infrastructure here to acquire the data from there,” he said.