A ghastly spectacle

摘要

It is all too easy, as a geologist, to be so carried away by the fascination of natural disasters that you forget the human cost. The eruption of Mount Pelee a hundred years ago on the island of Martinique in the Antilles is often cited as an example of an eruption producing pyroclastic surges―the turbulent, hot avalanches of ash and gas that can travel kilometres from erupting volcanoes at speeds of hundreds of kilometres per hour. One such surge overran the town of St Pierre, 7 kilometres away, in a matter of minutes, killing almost everyone in its path. Some 30 000 people died.