When throwing and riding on Mount Spurr, a giant volcano northwest of Anchorage, began to picked up in October, the Alaska volcano control agency raised a warning level to ensure that the nearby community and the aircraft passes will have enough warning to any eruption.
The campaign of reducing the cost of Trump’s administration has set this work in danger.
Credit cards used by employees of the Volcano of Geological Research of the United States in Alaska are used to pay for travel and other costs frozen, according to two people who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to newspaper media.
What is crucial, these costs include telecommunications services to which the observatory relies to transfer data from their surveillance systems to volcanoes, people said. If consumption is still limited, these services could be excluded. This could mean loss of real -time information about volcanic activities, people said.
And if employees cannot pay trips, a helicopter and a ship will not be able to go to the field to repair and maintain their supervision equipment. A large part of this gear is located in a remote, robust environment, where it is subject to damage to storms and extreme winter conditions.
The loss of data on the surveillance volcano from the region would be a “complete disaster,” said Jeff Freymueller, a professor of geophysics at Michigan State University, who had previously worked as coordination scientist Alaska vulcano Observatory. Thousands of people and huge amounts of cargo travel daily through the Aleut Islands, which hold most of the Alaska volcanoes, as they exceed the Pacific Ocean.
“We know what happens when the plane flies through the ash cloud,” said Dr. Freymueller. “It’s a disaster. And that can’t be repeated.”
Representatives of American geological research, which is part of the internal affairs department, did not immediately respond to the commentary request.
In recent weeks, Trump’s administration has moved rapidly to bring a reduction in the costs and dismissal of federal agencies. Executive command signed by President Trump on Wednesday He further strengthened the Government Efficiency Department, led Elon Musk to review the consumption of federal employees. The order seems to have spent a 30-day freezing on credit cards issued by the Government, at the same time expressing exceptions to assistance in disasters and “other critical services”.
So far, credit cards released to workers in the Observatory of the Alaska volcano are not excluded. According to people who are familiar with the situation, it is unclear how much telecommunications services could be discontinued quickly if payments cannot be made.
The Volcano Observatory together runs American geological examination, the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Alaska Department of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.
For now, the observatory is still monitored by Mount Spurr for signs that it is approaching the eruption. Small, shallow earthquakes were discovered. The money was seen fluttering about its peak.
The second volcano of Alaska is on even more warning status. On Great Sitkin Volcanositting on an island in the Aleut chain, the Lion slowly erupts from the top of the crater since 2021.
