The Nuclear Option: What if … the volcano?

Something approximating normality is beginning to return, though normality will only resume when tourists start coming in and are not departing – finally.

These have been extraordinary days. And their impact will slowly diminish, as the ash starts to fade or heads off in the direction of Canada. Sorry, Canada, but you shouldn’t feel that you can escape the problems. The good news is that tourists tend to have short memories and to not be deterred by extraordinary events. Except. Whereas an extraordinary happening, such as 9/11, brought chaos, such an occurrence is somehow manageable. There is a degree of control that can be brought to bear. It’s not the same with nature. It is the sheer unpredictability, with no hope of control, that heightens a sense of uncertainty.

April is going to be a wash-out, despite the good weather. May? The hotels, we understand, will be making “super” offers, largely because the tour operators are forcing them to. To get confidence back, there has been a grand meeting involving the tourism minister, hoteliers, tour operators, travel agencies, airlines and other transport operators, from which will come a concerted spate of PR to get the British and the Germans to travel. Let’s just hope those memories are indeed short.

Someone said yesterday that it’s like last year. The volcano is this year’s swine flu. By implication, the effects of the ash – on jet engines – have been exaggerated, just as the flu’s impact and diffusion was. Maybe it has been, and I guess we can be assured that any way in which planes can be kept in the air will be being looked at, in the event that there is another eruption, but you wouldn’t count on there being a solution. The comparison with swine flu isn’t valid. That didn’t stop people flying. And the effect was minimal.

The good news is that volcano Katla shows no sign of doing a copycat eruption. We can but hope that it doesn’t. While the airline engineers study the data and ways to mitigate the effects of volcanic ash, we have to suppose that there is some serious consideration being given, in governmental circles, to what would happen if the worst case did happen. Now that the effects of one, not-that-massive eruption are being digested, the scenario planning for something altogether more cataclysmic has to be undertaken. Gloomy would be an understatement as a prediction.

Were the worst case to occur, God forbid, and were it prove impossible to fly, except perhaps intermittently, for months, then the prognosis would be dire. The tourism market would collapse, along with what currently remains of the property market and much of the island’s economy. Unemployment would be unprecedented. It might be possible to enjoy the sun – and the roads – untrammelled by hordes of tourists, tourists buses, rented cars, but the reality, for all but those with plenty stashed away, would be horrendous. Businesses failing. People on the streets. Soup kitchens. Riots. Curfews. Initially, people would doubtless help each other, but a time would come when they wouldn’t; when survival takes over. Society would, if not collapse, then be deeply and angrily polarised. The centre would be unable to hold.

It would be the nuclear option, or rather the nuclear possibility. It might not be nuclear winter, because the sun would still shine, but then when winter returned, it would be colder and wetter because of temperature cooling caused by the ash clouds, and there would be even less work and even more on the streets or leaving to head back to what would be uncertainty elsewhere.

One can over-exaggerate, but foolish would be the Mallorcan politician who isn’t having sleepless nights as to what might happen and who isn’t establishing contingencies. Of course nothing might happen. Or not for many, many years. But the fact is that it has happened; just that we may have got away with it.

There would be one solution. Oh, that there were. “Beam me over to Mallorca, Scotty.” Or there’s another one – that all the panic over the ash was just that, panic, and that there was not the need to be as cautious, as the British Government now seems to be admitting.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The End Of The World As We Know It: The volcano and Mallorca

Sunday. Two in the afternoon. The Mile in Alcúdia.

Competing attractions there may be – the fairs in the port and the wine do in Pollensa – but this seems unusual. It is two o’clock. There is barely a soul to be seen. Barely anything is open. The Chinese, ever the Chinese, wave their leaflets around. Well they would, were anyone passing. The fairs aren’t really competition to the Mile. Mile-ists tend not to do fairs.

Sunday at two o’clock in the afternoon. The airport in Palma has been closed for two hours. It is the latest one to suspend operations. Barcelona did likewise on Saturday. Nothing is coming in. The Mile might not be expected to be busy in April, but there is not busy and there is nothing, or barely anything.

A reps evening was due to take place later. It still will have done, but with vastly reduced numbers. The rest are stuck in England. No one is coming in.

This is serious. Not because some reps can’t make it, but because it has the feel of the last straw. The saving grace is that this is April, when there are only limited numbers. But April isn’t the point. What is, is if the volcano keeps on erupting. It almost doesn’t bear thinking about. All those last-minutes that are meant to be booking. They won’t be if flights keep being suspended. Or if travellers reckon that there might be a risk of Iceland wreaking its vengeance again. Last-minute, booked well in advance; neither here nor there if flight paranoia invades the traveller’s psychology. The bombs didn’t stop the visitors and nor were they going to, but an exploding volcano, miles and miles away … ? It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Just imagine it for one moment. A terrible act of God puts paid to flights. No one coming in. For weeks or months. Who can be sure this won’t happen? This is not serious, it is tourism apocalypse. The end of the world as we know it. On the mainland of Europe it would be bad enough, but on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean, it would be even worse. Ferry connections there are, but disruptions to flights on anything like a prolonged basis would be nothing short of disastrous. Even if there were periods of clear skies, the uncertainty, the possibility of the skies darkening again with ash could create mayhem.

We’ve become used to the idea of, the possibility of man-made interventions, such as terrorism, but we’ve forgotten about the capability of nature. Worry there may be about climate change and the havoc this might cause on a tourism future, but volcanoes? Who would ever have thought about volcanoes?

When the strategists do their plans, create their scenarios, they should always take into account “threats”. Natural events are threats, as much as sudden economic shocks. But which of the strategists would have written on their brainstorming-session flip-charts the word volcano? Perhaps they will in future. For now though, the biggest question is what might happen next. According to a scientist writing in “The Sunday Times”, there “remains a very real possibility that the volcano will continue to erupt on-and-off for months to come”. Weather will play a part if there are indeed further eruptions – as in wind directions would influence the ability to fly – but there is also the possibility that a bigger volcano in Iceland will go off. It did so on both the previous occasions that Eyjafjallajökull erupted in 1612 and then in 1821-1823. Just look at those dates, and then add 2010. The strategists might, actually, have been wise to have referred to patterns of volcano eruptions. This bigger volcano, Katla, also once erupted in a truly catastrophic fashion, on a worse scale than yet another volcano in the late eighteenth century which caused a three degree reduction in temperatures, bringing extreme cold and record rainfalls as far south as northern Africa.

Apocalypse.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Ash Wednesday: Volcanoes and smoking

“Here come further hurricanes.”

When I said this a couple of days ago, in the context of the new corruption cases, little did I know that a major natural event had occurred – on the Wednesday. Hurricanes, well very strong winds and storms, have been known to hit Mallorca, but the fallout – if not literally, then metaphorically – from a volcano blowing its top is the last thing you expect. As though things couldn’t get worse – cree-sis, cree-sis still persisting – along comes an event on a biblical scale. Act of God, as the insurance companies will be insisting. One should appeal to a Higher authority. Please, God, don’t give the locals any more excuse to reach for the blades. “Un desastre.” When isn’t it “un desastre”? Actually it isn’t un desastre – in Mallorca. What would be, would be a volcano suddenly erupting in the centre of Palma. That would be a disaster. But un desastre it is, because flights have been grounded across northern Europe. And this means that tourists have been grounded – in other countries. For one car-hire agency at least, the volcano has been un desastre. That was how the boss described it to me, at any rate. No tourists arriving, no vastly inflated hire-car charges to be made – allegedly. Un desastre.

What could though be a greater desastre would be if this damned volcano decides to carry on exploding. Iceland has form in this regard. Long it may have been since the last great outpouring of ash, but it continued to do so for a couple of years. The Mr. Spocks, the vulcanologists, cannot be sure if the pattern will be the same this time around, but if it were to be and were those shards to be knocking around in airspace, then regular “desastres” might just be on the cards.

Poor old Iceland. Cod war. Lousy weather. Bloody big blokes who haul cars. Bank failures. Frozen foods. Not a lot going for it, other than Björk. So they take it out on everyone else.

Volcano – all that’s needed.

Meanwhile … more ash. The Spanish health minister has said that a total ban on smoking in public places will be implemented “from June”. No precise date, just from June (so maybe, say maybe, that 22 June date was right after all). This, at any rate, was how “The Diario” had it, referring to the fact that the ban would come in prior to the completion of other “sessions”, meaning … who knows. Elsewhere though, it is said that there will be a period prior before the full introduction of the ban, i.e. after June. Yet again, smoke rings of confusion waft into the air. The reporting is contradictory, but this is probably because the messages coming out of government are. There needs to be a clear announcement about this, but you wouldn’t bank on there being one. I’m sorry to have to say this, but this confusion is typical of Spanish legislation. Badly communicated, unclear, added on to something previous that may or may not still apply. Poor. Very, very poor.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.