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Katmai
Excerpt - Katmai
Katmai volcano erupts
… On June 6, the mail boat Dora was sailing into Kupreanof Strait between Kodiak and Afognak islands when crewmembers noticed a huge, dense cloud rise over Mount Katmai. It spread northwestward over the sky and masses of volcanic ash settled over the sea. It became so dense the captain had to bypass Kodiak.
 Mount Katmai’s eruption in 1912 was the largest eruption in the world during the 20th century
Photo courtesy of University of Alaska
Amelia Elkinton Collection, UAF-1974-175-384
The clerk on the mail ship vividly described their experience as the ship crossed the area of falling ash.
“… lurid flashes of lightning glared continually around the ship while a constant boom of thunder increased the horror of the inferno raging around us … we might as well have been miles above the surface of the water … birds floundered, crying wildly through space and fell helpless to the deck.”
Before the Dora brought the news of the eruption to Seward, none of that town’s residents knew what had happened.
“On June 7, the people of Seward heard a series of explosions that sounded like heavy blasting,” Mel Horner later remembered. “High overhead a tremendous mist like a cloud formed, blotting out the brightness of the sun and turned it copper-colored. For the following three days, the cloud hung over the city, gradually settling closer and closer to the earth, and the buildings, yards and streets were covered with a fine layer of ash. Lawns were killed and the fresh shoots of trees leafing out, also.”
 The mail ship Dora brought news of Katmai’s eruption to the world.
Photo courtesy of University of Washington
John E. Thwaites Collection, THW154
A news dispatch from Cordova, 360 miles northeast of the eruption, reported that many people received painful burns when a heavy rain mixed with the ash in the air to form sulfuric acid. At LaTouche, also in Prince William Sound, the rain was so acidified by the fumes it caused serious burns wherever it touched flesh. The extreme limit of the fumes was much more distant for they were reported from several places in Washington state and British Columbia, about 1,500 miles from the scene of the eruption.
However, the Alaska community that underwent the most terrifying experience was much nearer — the closest sizable town, Kodiak, was 120 miles away. Terror and fear held the island’s 400 inhabitants in a grip of smothering ashes and volcanic fumes for days.
None of the people who went through those days fail to mention the awful darkness, which was described as something so far beyond the darkness of the blackest night that it cannot be comprehended by those who did not experience it.
Through some freak of sound transmission, most of the people in Kodiak did not hear the explosions at all. Their first warning was a peculiar-looking, fan-shaped cloud, blacker and denser than any cloud ever seen before. Flashes of lightning flickered through the cloud, thoroughly alarming the people since electrical storms are rare at Kodiak.
Ash falls
By 5 p.m., a light ash began to fall and by 8 p.m. it was dark. The ash fell so heavily that people were afraid they would suffocate. As it drifted through the doors and sifted through the windows, Kodiak islanders remembered the fate of the people of Pompeii, and they began to fear that they, too, would be buried alive. The ash drifted, swirled and eddied — it filled the nostrils and stung the eyes. All that first night of horror the noise, gas, earth shocks, lightning and thunder continued.
A brief respite came on June 7, in the morning, and then it started again. The density of the ash flow was incredible. So thick was the air with ashes, that when a log building burned to the ground, people 200 feet away were unaware.
 Ash fell on the town of Kodiak for three days.
Photo courtesy of University of Washington
John E. Thwaites Collection, THW169
Fortunately for the people of Kodiak, the Revenue Cutter Manning was in the harbor at the time, and the priest of the Greek Orthodox Church told his people that if the church bells began to ring they were to go down to the dock where the Manning was berthed.
About 4 a.m. on the morning of June 8 the church bells began to chime and the ship’s whistle blew blast after blast. People tied dampened cloths over their faces and groped their way along fences and through drifted banks of ash to seek refuge. It was the longest walk they ever took, according to people who went through the experience.
The captain of the Manning finally decided not to stay in port, as it could mean death to all. There might be chance for life if the ship could get out to the open sea. The Manning first anchored off Woody Island, however, where its 103 inhabitants were brought to the boat. Many of them were nearly starving for food and water.
More than 500 people jammed aboard the vessel, which was incapable of accommodating one-fourth that number. It was standing room only on the crowded decks….
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