Four years later, Bezymianny collapsed in Kamchatka, Russia, during the Cold War. Six-days-long pre-climactic activity was associated with intrusion of small cryptodome /dome. Before it erupted in 1951, when Upoto was a boy, the people living on the mountain did not realize it was a volcano. MOUNT LAMINGTON, now in eruption in Northeastern Papua, is shown on old maps as Berepo. We have concluded that the six-days-long pre-climactic activity before the 1951 eruption (which included felt local seismicity, frequent ash-laden explosions of vulcanian type, bulging of the volcano slope accompanied with landslides) was associated with shallow-level intrusion of a highly viscous magma body (cryptodome/dome) of andesitic composition with a volume of approximately 0.01 km3. Lamington has a … Summit is 1,680 meters. In the studied NE-N-NW sector of the devastated area, in the zone proximal to the volcano, the PDC emplaced a normally graded layer of coarse ash and lapilli mixed in the base with picked-up soil and plant fragments. The devastation did not have a uniform spread – going out as far as 12 km (8 mi) in some directions but only 6 km (4 mi) in others. • Collection of photographs and colour slides from the 1951 eruption of Mt Lamington, Papua New Guinea / Albert Speer - held and partially digitised by the National Library of Australia Latitude lines of 8.95° S and Longitude lines of 148.15° E. New Guinea is an island outside Australia. ScienceDirect ® is a registered trademark of Elsevier B.V. ScienceDirect ® is a registered trademark of Elsevier B.V. The juvenile material is crystal-rich andesite with a unimodal vesicularity distribution (4 to 36%). The 1951 blast of Mt.Lamington is similar to blasts of volcanoes Bezymianny (1956), St.Helens (1980), and Montserrat (1997). Nearly 3,000 persons were killed by the pyroclastic flows that accompanied the explosion of Lamington. Mount Lamington broke out in violent eruption on 21 January 1951, killing thousands of Orokaiva people, devastating villages and destroying infrastructure. There is no record of it ever having erupted before. My brother was Erl Cowley, aged 16, who died alongside him. Mount Lamington Eruption – 1951. About fifty years ago, on 21 January 1951, a major explosive eruption at Lamington killed ~3,000 people, the most of all historical volcanic eruptions in Papua New Guinea. In 1951, Mount Lamington collapsed in Papua New Guinea with only a few witnesses, mostly aborigines. Five thousand feet high, it was not even recognised as a volcano until it began erupting on 18 January 1951. You should know: The complacency of the Australian administration was summed up by an official who – when criticism of official indifference reached fever pitch after the event – blandly stated: ‘As Mount Lamington volcano was eight miles from Higaturu, I formed the opinion that there was no immediate danger to human life’. A comprehensive review of the eruptive activity has been given by Wilson et al. © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995), Sat 27 Jan 1951, Page 1 - MT. Eruption History. Generations of Orokaiva people had lived on the rich volcanic soils of Mount Lamington, apparently unaware of … But erupt it did, to fearful effect. Age 47 when killed with son Erl in the eruption of Mount Lamington on 21st January 1951. Within minutes of the eruption, nuées ardentes destroyed the city of St. Pierre, killing almost 30,000 inhabitants. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvolgeores.2020.106947. 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