July 12, 2010
ONE News, New Zealand
Beneath the waters of Lake Taupo lies one of the world's biggest volcanoes and scientists say an eruption would be one of the most life threatening events New Zealand has ever faced.
They say an eruption involving New Zealand's largest lake would dwarf the trouble caused by the 1995 Ruapehu eruption and lahar flows since then.
"Taupo on a global scale is a very large volcano. The crater is somewhere in the order of 15 and 20 kilometres in diameter, so it's right up there in the top ten globally for size," said volcanologist Brad Scott.
Other experts think it could even eclipse the worldwide disruption caused by the Icelandic volcano three months ago.
"We know that the North Island would be pretty heavily damaged and everything would be affected, basically starting with the airplanes," said volcanologist Nico Fournier.
But scientists say that there will be plenty of warning signs before the big bang including more frequent earthquakes, hot springs around Taupo drying up and the lake could start bubbling.
Fournier says scientists are always on alert, monitoring the lake 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
"We know the volcano is still doing things, but it's not yet fully understood. It's something we're actually doing research on at the moment to see if it really is the volcano acting up a bit," Fournier said.
The Taupo volcanic zone is one of the most active in the world. There are 12 active volcnoes and at least 30 geothermal hot spots that stretch from Mount Ruapehu to White Island.
"We have people living on or playing on those volcanoes almost every day, like the skifields at Ruapehu and the tourism at White Island, so we definitely pay a lot of attention to those in the short term. But we treat the Taupos equally the same," says Scott.
Peter Lechner from the Civil Aviation Authority says in the event of Taupo erupting, shutting airports is dependent on the degree of the volcanic fallout.
"The eruptions we've seen so far not a big problem, if we had a massive eruption out of Taupo, I don't think aviation would be operating much at all," he said.
Phil Parker from the Civil defence says New Zealand is not well prepared to deal with an eruption.
"People may need to self evacuate because we don't have the personnel to evacuate everybody. We rely heavily on people doing it themselves," he says.
Taupo erupts every 900 years on average, and the last big bang was 1700 years ago. Scientists say it's not a matter of if, but when.
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/taupo-volcano-would-dwarf-iceland-eruption-3639510