What were the effects of the Mt. Pinatubo eruption of 1991?

There were many short-term and long-term effects of the Mt. Pinatubo eruption on the 15th June 1991. Many of them may not have been as bad had a typhoon not have hit the island of Luzon.

SHORT-TERM EFFECTS

The most immediate effect of the eruption was the 10km stream of mud and lava that flowed down the slopes of the volcano at 80kmph killing anything in its path. It wrecked homes and crops in its way with ease. It would have killed much more maybe even thousands of people had the geologists not been so accurate with their predictions and evacuated thousands of people out of the danger zone.

Ash was thrown an enormous 35km or 22miles into the sky. This huge amount of ash blocked out the sun’s light. One of geologists investigating the volcanic activities leading up to the violent eruption on 15th June said:
“It was as if day had turned to night!”
Copious ash, pumice, and rocks rained on the surrounding cities injuring people and making breathing difficult for many people and giving them pneumonia. The Clarke Airbase (US air base) was destroyed by the weight of ash and was never rebuilt due to the effect it would have had on the financial state of the USA and because it was then seen as not necessary.
The Subic Bay naval base was covered in ash and pumice badly damaging it. One US Subic Bay naval base officer was heard to say,
“Our base is grey, the same colour as our ships.”
In panic some people died in car accidents trying to flee from the volcano.

The photo above shows the air bunkers at Clarke Airbase th their roofs collapsed due to the wieight of ash.

LONG-TERM EFFECTS

There were many long-term effects of the eruption, including the 250,000 people displaced after wet ash made their homes collapse or lahars swept away their home or acted as a concrete filling in the buildings. Millions of dollars were spent rebuilding the lost buildings. The Naval Base unlike the Clarke Airbase was considered too valuable to be left destroyed.

½ of livestock died in the months following the eruption and crops were highly less than the year previous due to flooding and ash deposits.

Disease became rife due to the homelessness killing many.

The massive amounts of sulphur that exploded high into the atmosphere were blown by winds around the whole globe. This gas filtered some of the Sun’s light and thus reduced the temperature of the world by 1ºC for five years. This may be good for the Earth for five years but after that geologists have said it will increase the average temperature all over the world due to global warming.

The image above shows a satellite image of the sulphur dioxide which was released from Mt. Pinatubo and then blown aroung the whole world by winds.

Some rivers were blocked with ash and pumice posits which meant any remaining rivers burst their banks whenever there was rain. This flooding is supposed to continue for decades.
Monsoon rains that fell after the eruption caused avalanches of volcanic debris killing many and destroying more houses. The typhoon destroyed even more buildings as it made the ash wet increasing its weight. It also caused many mudslides and lahars. As well as that it blew ash far into the evacuation zones and to Manila (capital of Luzon) making people with asthma have serious breathing difficulties.

Mt. Pinatubo still erupts today regularly however just with not as much force as on 15th June 1991.

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