Into the Inferno Page #2

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look up,

and move out of the way.

What really impressed me

was seeing these scientists

toiling up the side of the volcano

with such heavy loads.

The temperature

on this particular morning

was minus-25 degrees Fahrenheit.

My face is frozen.

One of them stood out.

Despite having that fantastic

lava lake down there,

with all that energy,

we still have to bring old

petrol generators up to the crater rim.

Man vs. machine, chapter 53.

Professor Clive Oppenheimer on Erebus.

Hands in pockets.

Waiting for it to start spontaneously.

I think he'll be waiting a long time.

Have you ever seen two men kiss

on the top of Erebus before?

I like working with Harry.

Is that all right? Thank you.

It was easy

to start a friendship with him.

On one of our first days together,

he insisted upon training

his own camera on me.

Let's turn it off, yeah? Okay?

Do you see them

only in destructive terms, volcanoes?

No, I... I do not. Uh...

Something different.

It's good that they are there.

And the soil we are walking upon,

uh, is not permanent.

There's no permanence

to what we are doing...

no permanence to the efforts

of human being,

no permanence to art,

no permanence to science.

There is something of a crust

that is somehow moving,

and it makes me fond of the volcano

to know that our life,

human life, or animals,

can only live and survive

because the volcanoes created

the atmosphere that we need.

Do you have a sense of the different kinds

of volcanoes and different eruptions?

I know you filmed on La Soufrire

de Guadeloupe many years ago,

which is a very...

Well, do you sense differences

in the activity here with...?

Yeah, La Soufrire was very volatile.

It was all the way back in 1976

when I first filmed a volcano.

This was on the Caribbean island

of Guadeloupe.

The mountain was expected to explode

at any moment,

and 70,000 people

were rapidly evacuated.

The fear was intense

because of the memory of an event

that took on apocalyptic proportions.

It was known that, in 1902,

on the neighboring island of Martinique,

Mount Pele exploded.

The signals that La Soufrire

issued in Guadeloupe

were almost identical

to what had happened.

It was measured in 1902.

So, everybody was afraid

it would explode,

and it would explode

with very, very massive force,

many times an atomic bomb,

Hiroshima-size.

So, I was not interested in the volcano.

I was interested in one single man

who refused to be evacuated.

Uh-huh.

A different attitude towards death.

75 people...

75,000 people being evacuated,

and he stayed on.

I actually found him...

I find him sleeping.

I find him sleeping.

I had to wake him up on camera.

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