Recent Stories with tag volcano

Our stranded-in-Berlin correspondent, Charles Redell (who writes on sustainability and hangs out at Office Nomads) was supposed to fly home to Seattle on Saturday, but an unpronounceable Icelandic volcano put an end to that. Here is his first, second, and third reports on dealing with his unexpected stayover.

My time here in Germany is starting to turn into some semblance of a normal life, if you can believe it.

What does normal mean in completely abnormal circumstances?

It means spending the morning working in the hotel lobby surrounded by ten or so newly-expat compatriots while the U.S. sleeps. Talk about a great way to get through backlogged emails.

It means taking a break around noon and biking to a new neighborhood that may promise new adventures, new food, or at least new scenery. This in turn means finding a small cafe in an up-and-coming part of town and parking oneself on the balcony above the fray watching and analyzing the comings and goings of young, hip, beautiful Berlin.

"There's one that's in love with the barista."

"Look, Americans."

And also finding ways to tune out the constant drone of German techno....

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To re-cap: A group of twenty journalists traveled to Germany for a week to explore green building in Germany thanks to the German Foreign Ministry and The Eco-Logic Institute. Near the end of the trip, a volcano in Iceland erupted and European airspace was shut down.   

Our stranded-in-Berlin correspondent, Charles Redell (who writes on sustainability and hangs out at Office Nomads) was supposed to fly out on Saturday, but instead he spent it traveling to the airport to rebook tickets, then being a tourist for a few hours. By the end of the day, Charles' re-booked flight on Sunday was canceled and he was told that next Sunday was the soonest he could get on a flight. Here is his first dispatch and his second dispatch.

Things in Berlin are looking up, for our group anyway.

Today dawned sunny and warm, prompting a few of us to explore the possibility of renting bikes for our stay here. We found an awesome program, run by the German rail system. Simply put, you register with Call A Bike and then pick up a bike at the train station. A computer lock tracks your time with it and you're charged .08Eur per minute (9Eur for a day and 36Eur for a week). When you're done, lock the bike, call the system and number and tell them where in the downtown core it is, and they pick it up. Could not be more simple.

We took a nice slow ride out to the airport, six kilometers away. The entire trip was on dedicated bike infrastructure, much of it grade separated and with bike signal lights. There were no lines at the airport and I got a ticket booked for Thursday, which is currently everyone's best guess for the second day travel will be allowed.

On our ride, we found a trail along the river that ended up winding through a collection of small cottages that seem to be weekend homes for Berliners, within an easy bike ride of the city. In the summer, when the city is stultifying, they seemed to the perfect solution for a population addicted to true sustainable urban living.

Now, we sit, satisfied with our day, in love with our adopted city, and relatively content with the idea of spending more time living and working here, even if when it may end is unclear. [Photos after the jump.]...

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Our stranded-in-Berlin correspondent is Charles Redell, who writes on sustainability, hangs out at Office Nomads (oh, the irony!), and was in Berlin for a international green conference. He's still very much there, thanks to Iceland's ash-spewing Eyjafjallajokull volcano, which has disrupted flights worldwide. Here is his first dispatch. This one includes a photo gallery after the letter portion:

I've been trying to sort out how to explain what's been happening while stuck here in Germany for an indeterminate amount of time because of a volcano (a volcano!) and finding it terribly difficult. One thing about this experience is that things have been happening very fast, and very slowly at the same time.

Last night as I sat down to write about my day of bureaucracy, I realized that events I thought took place Friday actually happened earlier that same morning. But by the time I was writing, I'd been through two re-bookings, bought and returned a train ticket to Frankfurt, and done some touristy stuff.

Keeping up with things in anything like real time is impractical, if not impossible, since my smart phone is not compatible with European cell networks (I am forced to find a hotspot to use it or my laptop), and compiling all my thoughts at the end of the day just turns into a long ramble of events, experiences and thoughts, none of which can be sorted until this is all over.

So in the place of dispatches from an isolated Europe, I offer you images of the effects as I see them. In only some will the direct relationship to this unprecedented event be obvious, but over the coming days, the shots I send back will be things I've experienced only because of the Icelandic volcanic eruption and images of Berlin and Europeans dealing with it.

In the meantime, wish me luck as I look to rent a bike and ride it first to the airport, and then wherever the wonderful bike infrastructure takes me. Oh, and if you can work on helping me manifest clear skies and a seat on an airplane before next Sunday, that'd be great too. [Photos after the jump.]...

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The Toronto Star is doing it, so we will too. Our stranded-in-Berlin correspondent is Charles Redell, who writes on sustainability, hangs out at Office Nomads (oh, the irony!), and was in Berlin for a international green conference. He's still very much there, thanks to Iceland's ash-spewing  Eyjafjallajokull volcano, which has disrupted flights worldwide. Here is his "letter home" about how he learned of his extended stay, and spent his Saturday.

Word of the Icelandic volcano eruption first came as some kind of odd rumor. It was one of those stories that just don't make any sense on a morning when your brain is foggy from four days of travel, non-stop events, and Berlin beer halls.

As the day progressed though, the details became clear and all of us started realizing that with the press tour ending last Friday and flights home starting on Saturday, things were about to get interesting.

By Friday night's closing dinner, we all knew that this was not, actually, a closing dinner. All of our flights were canceled by then. A group gathered in my very small hotel room with our laptops and began Skyping all our airlines.

By 3 a.m. some ridiculous trips had been planned (a 5:30 a.m. train on Sunday from Berlin to Frankfurt to catch a 2 p.m. flight to Houston, with a connection to Seattle, for example), and we stumbled to bed.

When we woke up on Saturday though, things looked sour--and the hotel was telling us all that we couldn't stay. One of the airlines had booked all the rooms. We panicked. After a quick cup or seven of coffee, my brain slipped into planning mode.

We decided all to go to the travel agent who booked us to try and get alternatives, since the airports were now looking as if they were going to open by Sunday. Before we started off, we heard from the organizer of our trip, calling to tell us he had found the entire group rooms at a new hotel.

When he heard our plan to attack the travel agent, he told us not to bother: the office "is not what you think it is." With no cell phones with international plans, we couldn't call anyone, so we struck out for the downtown Berlin Lufthansa office. Which is closed on weekends (really).

We dug up a travel agent who said all we could do was call the airline or go to the airport. The news kept saying not to go to the airport, but calling meant being on hold for hours and they generally won't do anything when you do get through. We decided to go out there as it is just a 30-minute U-bahn (subway) ride....

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The Johnston Ridge Observatory volcano cam is maintained by the USFS and is located 5 miles from the crater.

The competition is close, but I think the HD cam trained on Mount St. Helens just slightly wins in a cam-to-cam comparison with the three cams watching Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano. These two aren't even in the running. The resolution is pretty good, but not great, and they're a bit smaller. (I should add that when the volcano is acting up, they are all slow to load from traffic.)

This web cam is located in Þórólfsfell, which has a view over the river Markarfljót and the glacier Eyjafjallajökull.

This live feed from a cam located in Þórólfsfell, on the other hand, is huge and copes relatively well with nightfall. The instructions say that nighttime viewing can be exciting, in fact, thanks to glowing from the volcano.

Speaking of coping, the BBC headline is "Flight chaos to continue into weekend."

The MODIS instrument on NASA's Terra satellite captured an Ash plume from Eyjafjallajokull Volcano over the North Atlantic at 11:35 UTC (7:35 a.m. EDT) on April 15, 2010. Credit: NASA/MODIS Rapid Response Team

That stream of volcanic ash that looks like the Big Muddy has thrown commercial airlines into a logistical turmoil not seen since 9/11.

Sea-Tac's Icelandair flights aren't going anywhere near the ash. A special volcano alert reveals that flights to London, Stockholm, Oslo, and Copenhagen have been canceled. [UPDATE: But they are flying to Iceland tonight, now that the ash has been exported--see this post's comments.] It's not just Icelandair, if you're planning on flying: because of the ash plume, officials have now shut down airspace in Britain, Ireland, France, and Scandinavia. The ash may invade Germany's airspace next.

Europe's busiest--and simply terrible--airport Heathrow is closed, and everyone at British Airways is facing a long, long day. The Washington Post quotes an aircraft safety expert as saying it could take up to two days, once the volcano stops erupting, for flights to resume.

When will the eruption stop? ABC asked Einar Kjartansson, a geophysicist at the Icelandic Meteorological Office: "It is likely that the production of ash will continue at a comparable level for some days or weeks."

Here, NASA explains why planes don't fly through volcanic ash--it gets sucked into engines, and its etching ruins cockpit visibility. For more on the volcano itself, don't miss these photos of the Eyjafjallajokull eruption on KOMO's site. Evacuation has been more widespread with this more violent eruption (ten to twenty times more powerful than the earlier March eruption), as glacier melt has fed rivers and led to flooding.

An Icelandair flight from Seattle was turned back after a southern volcano dormant almost 200 years erupted near Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull, a smaller glacier. The eruption occurred at 8 p.m. EDT on Saturday night, and planes were warned off landing at Keflavik, over 100 miles west of the volcano, because of the danger of volcanic ash. Locals in the area were quickly evacuated, though today farmers were anxious to return home to check on their animals.

The eruption was not unexpected; seismic activity beforehand indicated magma rising. Now at least one geophysicist is saying the activity might set off the neighboring Katla volcano, which sits beneath nearby Mýrdalsjökull [jökull=glacier]. "All known eruptions in Eyjafjallajökull were related to Katla eruptions and therefore it seems that they might a prelude to eruptions in Katla," Iceland Review Online quotes geophysicist Páll Einarsson saying.

Icelandair lists its volcanically delayed flights here. Delays aside, I completely recommend you visit Iceland whenever possible. Amazing things like this are always happening there.