The Volcano Disaster Assistance Program was developed by the U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance after the eruption of Nevado del Ruiz in 1985 that killed 23,000 people. The program responds to selected volcanic crises around the world, to assist in saving lives and property and to reduce economic losses.
When Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology and U.S. Geological Survey had monitored the volcano. With the help of the Volcano Disaster Assistance Program's crisis-response team, about 75,000 people and US$250 million to $375 million worth of equipment were evacuated before the major eruption.
Famous quotes containing the words volcano, disaster, assistance and/or program:
“It would be idle to say that we were not, from time to time, aware that a volcano slumbered fitfully beneath us. There were dark sides to the Slavery Question, for master, as for slave.”
—Marion Harland (1830–1922)
“It was so long since I’d seen masses of young men that I’d forgotten how much pleasanter men of between twenty and thirty were to be around with than older men. It isnt so true of women. When I was in my twenties I thought the grown adults I ran into were a disaster and now I know I was right.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“At a certain age, we have already been struck by love; it no longer develops alone, according to its own mysteries and fateful laws while our hearts stand by startled and passive. We come to its assistance ... Recognizing one of its symptoms, we recall, we bring back to life the others. Since we possess its song engraved in its totality within us, we do not need for a woman to tell us the beginning—filled with admiration inspired by beauty—to find the continuation.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“[T]he Congregational minister in a neighboring town definitely stated that ‘the same spirit which drove the herd of swine into the sea drove the Baptists into the water, and that they were hurried along by the devil until the rite was performed.’”
—For the State of Vermont, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)