The scene: A steaming volcano in the Andes. After 15 men on a research expedition descend into the caldera, flaming shards shoot into the sky. Six scientists die almost instantly in the blast. Glowing rocks set the team leader's clothes on fire, batter his skull, and nearly shear off his right foot. Two horrified female scientists rush from the volcano's flanks and daringly descend into the inferno to rescue survivors. In the aftermath, there are muted rumors that the team should never have been on the mountain.
The 1993 eruption of Colombia's Galeras volcano was a disaster, and just the sort of event that spells dollars to publishers. With the public snapping up books about climbers stranded on Mt. Everest and sailors lost in a ferocious Atlantic storm, could a tale of scientists blown apart by an Andean volcano be anything but a surefire hit? After all, there's danger, heroism, pathos, even the whiff of controversy; the only thing missing is sex. Publishers will soon find out if the story is strong enough to sell. Flooding shelves within weeks will be two new works boasting big advances and huge publicity campaigns: expedition leader Stanley Williams's first-person account of his not-so-excellent adventure, Surviving Galeras (Houghton Mifflin, $25), and science journalist Victoria Bruce's gimlet-eyed reconstruction of events, No Apparent Danger: The True Story of Volcanic Disaster at Galeras and Nevado del Ruiz (HarperCollins, $26).
Harrowing and riveting are words beloved by publishers, and both tales live up to the billing, at least in the sections where rocks are flying. But the picture some people get will not be pretty. For while Williams portrays scientists as inspired by a mix of public service, smarts, and bravado, Bruce depicts them as driven by ignorance, infighting, and ego.
Williams, a professor of geology at Arizona State University, has worked fearlessly on dozens of restless mountains on five continents for two decades. Galeras is one of the most active— and potentially dangerous— volcanoes around. Part of a string of active mountains running along South America's Andean spine, it is one of 15 singled out for intensive study by the United Nations, which has been trying to reduce the deaths and devastation that follow natural disasters. On the morning of January 14, 1993, while helping to run an international conference in Pasto, Colombia, on the threat posed by Galeras, Williams led 14 colleagues on a field trip into the mile-wide caldera; only two of the men wore hard hats. The scientists canvassed the area, checked gas emissions, and took microgravity readings. About four hours later, with some scientists directly inside the mouth of the volcano, it exploded.
Aided by writer Fen Montaigne, a former outdoors columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Williams re-creates the agonizing moments of the blast with pulse-pounding urgency, but the forward surge of a classic narrative is continually interrupted by jump cuts. One minute we're with Williams as the volcano opens with an explosive crack; the next we're jerked back to ancient Rome to ponder Vesuvius with Pliny the Elder. Appearing throughout are gratingly flattering profiles of Williams's fellow scientists. Williams himself emerges as a fiercely ambitious, hard-driving scientist with, in his words, a "not inconsiderable ego." He treats us to a blow-by-blow account of his life, which in the aftermath of Galeras included 17 operations to mend his smashed body, marital problems, a slowed career, and the confusion and depression that come in the wake of a head injury.
