My Love Affair With Volcanoes

Indiana Jones would have loved her company.

The alpha female from Aklan was a promising volcanologist who cracked the male clique at the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) in 1984. During a field work, Cheerie Tirazona Magalit discovered the oldest known fossil of a Stegodon, a genus of the elephant family, evidence that the Philippines may have been connected to mainland Asia by land bridges a long time ago.

“I got lost in the jungle many times, slept on a river bed drenched and starving. I nearly got raped when I was doing field mapping in Taal . This co-worker picked me up from Talisay. We had to cross a big lake at dusk. When we reached the middle of the lake, the engine went off and he decided to get very friendly. I couldn’t jump because I didn’t know how to swim and even if I could, it was miles from the shore. I told him that if he continued to harass me I could easily push him off the boat and both of us could drown and no one would benefit from this senseless death. He started the engine as if nothing happened and we got to the island where my friends were waiting.”

She also had close encounters with the New People’s Army.

“We (geologists) found ourselves between the rebels and government troops. If we befriended NPAs, we were considered communists. If we were seen with the military, we were called right-wing extremists. Both of these groups wouldn’t have any qualms shooting us and dumping our bodies somewhere. I remember being in Canlaon, Negros Oriental, an NPA-infested place. When we did our rounds there, some gun-toting men in uniform would hitch a ride with us. We could not tell if they were NPAs or military men. This made us uneasy because we could be mistaken for sympathizers of either group. And we could be in real trouble either way.”

Cheerie almost got bald when she contracted typhoid fever perhaps from drinking contaminated water in Mayon. The three-week confinement drove her bonkers so she escaped from the hospital for a few hours for a whiff of fresh air.

She experienced fleeing in pajamas as ashes started blanketing their observatory in Sto Domingo, Albay during Mayon’s eruption in 1984. “It was around two o’clock in the afternoon but it was dark as night. People were running in different directions, carrying their belongings in panic. It was pandemonium. It seemed like the end of the world. I kept my fears at bay by telling myself that I would live to tell my family and friends about this experience.”

Tagged the “queen of cool” by friends, Cheerie was a chemistry major at the University of the Philippines (Diliman) when a course in geology during her senior year changed her career path. She placed 11th at the board examinations for geologists in 1983.

“I found out it was difficult to land a job in the mining and petroleum industry if one was a new graduate and a female at that. Only the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) was employing young graduates at that time.”

PHIVOLCS under Director Raymundo Punongbayan was then hiring a handful of female geologists. The 30-odd technical group in the main office could be deployed any time. Around 20 staff were permanently in the field monitoring five volcanoes namely Canlaon, Bulusan, Mayon, Taal and Hibok-hibok.

Cheerie admitted she got a kick out of doing something dangerous and coming out alive. She got hooked on her work as she saw nature’s power in the raw.

“My first assignment was studying the rocks in Taal Volcano. I was a bit lukewarm until Mayon erupted in 1984, seven months after I joined PHIVOLCS. That started my love affair with volcanoes. Mayon was beautiful and with such pyrotechnic display at night, it was even more awesome to behold. It looked a giant, well-lit Christmas tree. During the day I would see billowy ash columns shooting up from the volcano to about 15 kilometers high. I would observe pyroclastic flow, a mass of hot gases and lava, barrelling down the mountain and incinerating everything on its path. This was the most dangerous as there was no escaping it. Temperatures could range from 500 to 1100 degrees C and a velocity of more than 100 km/hour. Then there were lava flows, streams of dark rocks bulldozing their way down the slope that at night looked like fiery rivers of incandescent material.”

Noted for its almost perfectly shaped cone, Mayon is one of the Philippines ‘ 22 active volcanoes. Its past eruptions had killed thousands of people and buried whole towns. Mayon and Taal have been acting up lately, prompting volcanologists to issue Alert Level I. The Philippines is in the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” where volcanic activity and earthquakes are common.

“Our instruments measured ground deformation or how much the ground/volcano was moving, tilting, inflating or deflating. We used two types of instruments: the Ranger Electronic Distance Measuring device (EDM) which measured the distance between a spot in the volcano and the base. We established mirrors in strategic sites. The device sitting on the base sent out laser beam which would hit the mirror. The mirror then reflected the beam back to the instrument and the instrument calculated the distance between the base and the mirror. We established a baseline data with which we compared subsequent data. If the distance decreased, that meant the volcano was bulging or growing towards the base. If the distance increased, that meant the volcano was deflating. Bulging meant magma was rising and could be a harbinger of an erupting volcano. Deflation could mean magma had withdrawn or depleted and an eruption was coming to an end. These things should be correlated with other data such as seismicity, gas and water chemistry, temperature, visuals, etc. The other type of machine that we carried was the Zeiss tiltmeter. We set up several stations around the volcano and each station was composed of points in a triangle and the instrument measured the amount of tilt. If the tilt was away from the volcano it could mean the volcano was inflating; if it was tilting towards the volcano it could be deflating. Not all deformations are caused by magma movement but could also be caused by withdrawal or injection of groundwater, tectonic activity, mass movement, etc. We have to be careful in interpreting our data. Again, data should be correlated with other parameters. These instruments were heavy and I had to carry them on my shoulders over steep slopes.”

After that she was deployed to other volcanoes like Bulusan, Canlaon and Hibok-hibok in Mindanao . An American volcanologist explains that a volcano can look as if it will blow up and then at the last minute, it backs off. It may snort, twitch and turn over for months and years, then go back to sleep. Or it may suddenly explode without enough warning.

“Nothing is definite really. A lot of indicators have to be considered. This is still not an exact science.”

Cheerie said she considered the dangers that accompanied her work an adventure. It was after the attempted rape incident that she became somewhat paranoid. Their volcano station in Taal island was pretty open so whenever she slept there alone she would have nightmares. “To me that was the most difficult part of my job, being out there by myself, not knowing if I was safe or not. It was not the volcano that bothered me, it was human beings.”

She also found herself in charge of the Petrology department with the main responsibility of identifying rocks. It was a tedious job, looking into the microscope the whole day. On top of this she was also going to graduate school.

After finishing her coursework at the University of the Philippines (Diliman) she moved to the University of Illinois in 1989 to continue her M.S. in Geology. She taught basic geology laboratory in exchange for free tuition and a stipend. The following year, she went to Washington ’s Smithsonian Institution as a visiting scientist. She did X-ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy (XRF) and Electron Microprobe analysis of volcanic rocks from Mayon and Taal . She also helped translate some materials for the World Volcanism Program, a compilation of past and present eruptions of volcanoes around the world which was a project undertaken by scientists at the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History .

Cheerie was privileged to visit Mount St Helens in Washington with a team of volcanologists from all over the world in 1989. This one-week excursion around Mt. St. Helens was part of the IAVCEI (International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth’s Interior) convention which culminated with the presentation of research papers in Santa Fe , New Mexico . She presented her paper on the Petrology of the 1984 Eruption of Mayon Volcano.

“I was so excited at being around experts whom I only read in scientific journals. They were rock stars, no pun intended. I was in great company. I also remember seeing snow for the first time and stepping on a permafrost.”

She was awed not just by Mount St Helen’s beauty but by the infrastructure that made the volcano accessible to visitors.

“I could not help but compare it to working in the Philippines where we had to walk miles of rugged terrain, heavy equipment in tow and baking under the scorching sun. Here in America , you can drive so close to the volcano. I remember hiking up to the crater of Mount St Helens wearing my fake Puma shoes. On our way down, my two Indonesian friends had to assist me as the soles of my shoes started to chunk off. Imagine if I had to walk barefoot on these hot, craggy rocks. I remember hammering rocks on the dome of the crater and because of our collective hammering, the seismometer recorded earthquakes. The seismologist ordered us to get out of the crater fast. For a moment, we all got tense until we realized what was causing that signature on the seismogram.”

She would love to visit other active volcanoes in the US such as Mount Rainier in Washington , Yellowstone Caldera in Wyoming , Long Valley Caldera in California and Mauna Loa in Hawaii .

Even with her student assistant experience in Chicago, her MA units in Environmental Management at the University of San Francisco , and a Certificate of Hazardous Materials Management from the University of California in Berkeley , Cheerie could not work as a Geologist in the United States .

“I would have loved to continue working as a volcanologist in California but only Feds employ this kind of job and they require US citizenship. I didn’t become a citizen until four years ago. I missed a few interesting and relatively lucrative jobs because of that.”

To work as a geologist in the US government or in the state of California , one has to take the State examination, pass the board examination in geology and earn a certificate in any of the following fields – engineering geology, hydrogeology, or seismology – to enhance one’s chances of getting hired. Only a few Filipinos have been employed in US government jobs and they usually have taken graduate studies in Europe . A foreign applicant’s transcript of records is first evaluated before he is allowed to take the board. A few years’ work experience in the US is also required. This is a Catch 22 situation: how can you gain local experience if they will not hire you because you have not passed the board? How can you take the board when you are supposed to have relevant local experience first?

Cheerie vows to take the examinations but in the meantime, she has to work somewhere.

“I worked for a clinical laboratory for 10 years. From being the lowest woman on the totem pole I started getting into ergonomics, safety and community service. My job as a materials analyst (a glorified purchaser) was not that exciting but it allowed me a lot of mobility so much so that I was able to do all these other things at work. I was lucky to work with a boss who understood that workers like me could be more productive if allowed to exercise their creativity. And so I initiated and led our ergonomics program which reduced work injury. I wrote articles for our company newsletter, led our company’s SF AIDS Walk team for eight years, and raised money for the American Cancer Society and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation for many years.

Realizing the need to shore up her finances for retirement and to understand how money works, Cheerie also got her license for life insurance and variable products. She worked for a financial broker on the side for a few years.

In 2003 the clinical laboratory she was working for closed and transferred its operation from Dublin to San Jose . She opted for a severance package as the commute was a killer. Thus, began her wanderings from one temporary job to another.

“Last year, I landed a teaching internship position. I taught earth science at a local high school while working on my MA in Education at the University of Phoenix and my teaching credentials. Whoa! I had never been in a more stressful job. Having no kids of my own and not having gone to a US high school, I was clueless as to how American kids behaved. At one point one my students tried to attack me. He went berserk when I told him a couple of times to stop talking while I was lecturing. He wiped my computer and other equipment off my desk. The security people later arrived. I was so shaken but surreally detached. The principal asked me if I wanted to go home but I said no. I could have quit right then but I was not going to be cowed by this behavior. What message would I be sending to my students?

“My general impression of kids in the US is they badly need attention. They lack guidance at home which translates to bad behavior in the classroom. One third of that school’s population are foster home kids so it was pretty tough. Most are raised by single parents or if they live with both parents, they rarely see their parents because they work in the bay area or have two jobs. The current mortgage crisis manifests in the students. Who could concentrate in school if they didn’t know where they’d live the next day? Of course I also had students that were made in heaven: well behaved, hardworking, motivated and unperturbed no matter what happened around them.”

Cheerie had second thoughts about teaching the following school year but fate seemed to have decided for her when she got laid off along with many other teachers. Nevertheless, she eventually found another job.

“I will start substituting next month. This way I will have a sampling of many different schools and grade levels so I can see where I really belong. I will also welcome a job that has to do with research, science education and employing creativity without the stress of classroom management.”

Even as Cheerie transforms and adapts herself in America , she still pursues her first love. Wherever there are mountains, volcanoes or any interesting geological features, she finds her way there.

“I sometimes wish I could go back to geology or volcanology even if this meant going back to the Philippines . I really enjoyed my profession. But as much as I have good memories of being a volcanologist back home, I could not stand the politics. At the time I was leaving, our office was very polarized and I was caught in the middle. That was one of the reasons I left.”