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Associated Press - March 23, 2009 10:34 PM ET
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Volcano monitoring became a political football last month but Alaska's system worked well when Mount Redoubt erupted last night (Sunday) and this morning.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal in February gave the Republican response to President Obama's address to Congress on the economic stimulus package.
Jindal said the package was "larded with wasteful spending," including $140 million for volcano monitoring.
That drew a strong response from Alaska Senator Mark Begich, who said volcano monitoring is a matter of life and death.
The Alaska Volcano Observatory was ready with warnings to flight officials Sunday night when Mount Redoubt blew five times, sending potentially deadly ash clouds north of Anchorage.
The volcano blew at night, and even after sunrise, Mount Redoubt was socked in by clouds, obscuring ash that that can clog a jet engine and knock aircraft from the sky.
Seismometers and atmospheric pressure sensors alerted scientists that an eruption had occurred.
Weather radar confirmed the presence of an ash cloud that ascended more than eleven miles above sea level.
US Geological Survey geophysicist John Power says that without instruments in the ground, the observatory would not have been able to say the event was occurring.
Alaska Airlines canceled 19 flights because of ash clouds.
Era Aviation canceled four and Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage kept 60 planes in shelters.
Winds blew the ash north toward Willow and Talkeetna.
Volcanic ash can injure skin, eyes and breathing passages but the greatest hazard is to aircraft.
Power says when an airplane flies into an ash clouds, it's like flying into a sand blaster.
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