My Life and Times

January 23, 2005QUESTIONS FOR SIMON WINCHESTER Dean of DisasterInterview by DEBORAH SOLOMON You are the author of ''Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: Aug. 27, 1883,'' as well as a coming book on the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 -- what went through your head when you first learned of the tsunami? I was on holiday in England at the time. I heard the 5 o'clock news, and I have to confess: I thought, Should I go? Should I ring up The Sunday Telegraph and go? English friends of mine called and said, ''Are you sure you are not exploiting this?'' How odd. Do they think you exploited Krakatoa by publishing a book about it? Krakatoa has passed into history, so it has historical validity. But to write about this current event, and to do it with enthusiasm, you're advancing your career on the back of a tragedy. You Brits are so anxious about advancing your station in life that it's amazing you get can out of bed in the morning. That is one reason I like to live here in America. I am ambitious. I like success. Here it is not something to be ashamed of. You began your career as a geologist, after studying at Oxford. All I wanted to do was wander around the world. But I was a bad geologist. How, exactly, would you define a bad geologist? They're the ones who don't find the copper deposits they are sent to find. Are you suggesting you were too anxious about advancing your career to find any copper? Not quite. I had been sent to Uganda by a mining company and, to be fair, the area where I was sent didn't have any copper. One problem I have with geology is that it reduces existence to rocks. Do you believe in God? You have to take it on faith. And I don't have that degree of faith. Looking at life from the perspective that geology offers, which renders man incredibly insignificant, I find it difficult to regard man as anything other than a biological accident. And what about nature? Do you find it benign or evil? Nature is not evil. The world occasionally shrugs its shoulders, and people get knocked off. The earth, for geological reasons that are well known, is a fairly risky place to live. To be evil, you have to have intent. Any remarkable natural happening in which no human will is employed cannot be regarded as evil. How will the tsunami change you? I am afraid it doesn't. When the world works in a terrifying way, it doesn't alter my beliefs. If not you, do you think other people will be spiritually tested by the tsunami? In northern Sumatra, it will make for more fundamentalist Muslims, and that has to be dangerous. The imams are there, and the only buildings that survived were the mosques. They survived because they were well built, a solid place of refuge. I recently read that natural disasters most affect the poor, who have less choice about where to live and the quality of their housing. I don't know about that. Why do we as a people choose to live in beautiful and risky places? Beautiful places are relatively dangerous; the forces that made them beautiful are the same forces that will ultimately destroy them. Is there any place safe to live? We should all live in central or southwest Queensland in Australia, which is geologically stable. Or Kansas or Nebraska, because it's relatively geologically stable. I am sure there is no emergency plan for Topeka. How can you say Kansas is safe? Look what happened to Dorothy in ''The Wizard of Oz.'' Nothing is eternally stable, and even Kansas isn't really in Kansas anymore. The earth is in a constant state of flux.
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