Around 60 volcanoes erupt in the average year. On any particular day, there are usually about 20 volcanoes erupting somewhere in the world. Naturally, they can’t all make headlines. But when there are human tragedies involved, we need to question the priorities of the news media.
Contrast the fuss about eruption warnings in Iceland with the vanishingly low media profile of the current eruption on Fogo, one of the islands in the Cape Verde archipelago off the coast of West Africa.
In Iceland, great fears of an ash cloud eruption that could down or ground aircraft subsided as the magma broke surface beyond the ice and fed a large and spectacular but pretty harmless fissure eruption across a remote and uninhabited region.
On the other hand, since Fogo’s eruption began on November 23 it has so far destroyed two villages and the homes of more than 1,000 people.
Cape Verde became independent from Portugal in 1975 and Fogo is home to some 37,000 inhabitants. A previous eruption on the island in 1995 covered six square kilometers with lava. The current eruption has been even more voluminous, sending lava bulldozing its way through two whole villages.
