After thousands of airline schedules were disrupted across Europe in recent days as a result of the dangerous clouds of ash spewed from a volcanic eruption in the North Atlantic island nation of Iceland, efforts are being made to resume somewhat normal life, and to estimate the economic, health and environmental losses.
Airline flights were grounded because of the fear that volcanic dust would be sucked into hot airline engines and turn to a liquid glass, choking the engines and potentially causing fatal crashes.
But what about the dust on the ground? Icelanders tried to stay indoors to minimize breathing the volcanic residue. There was concern about the smaller economic problem of cattle breathing the falling ash.
The economic loss has been guesstimated at more than a billion dollars, in addition to disrupting millions of lives in many European nations, whose people were adversely affected by the ash flow.
There was literally “no defense” against the unruly forces of nature. The full cost in health and economics will never be completely known. But those in the path of the volcanic ash clouds have begun to breathe a little easier today — hoping the volcano’s action is over for now.