1902 Mt Pelee

On May 8, 1902, Mount Pelee, a volcano on the Island of Martinique in the Lesser Antilles, Caribbean, erupted and completely destroyed Saint-Pierre. The city had a population of 30,000 people that all lived within a 4 mile radius of the volcano. Everyone on the island was killed aside from a few survivors. A pyroclastic flow of superheated gases and fragments of volcanic material had swept rapidly along the surface of the ground instead of moving upward into the atmosphere as often happens with volcanic eruptions. In this case it seems that a mass of magma had solidified near the top of the volcano, preventing the escape of material vertically when internal pressures reached the point of eruption, thus forcing a horizontal outburst of hot lava and gases. The people of Saint-Pierre as well as those on ships in the harbor were overwhelmed by a mass of red-hot volcanic material racing toward the city at over 100 mph.

There were plenty of warnings in 1902 of the approaching eruption. For more than a week before May 8 there had been a continuous sequence of minor explosions at the summit and numerous tremors and showers of ash that reached Saint-Pierre making breathing difficult. In addition, large numbers of red ants, centipedes, and snakes moved away from the mountain and invaded the city. Fifty people died as a result of snakebites during this time.

A group of colonial officials visited the mountain four days before the eruption and declared that there was no need for an evacuation. When the volcano actually erupted and the pyroclastic flow reached the city, thousands of barrels of rum stored in the city’s warehouses exploded, sending rivers of the flaming liquid through the streets and into the sea. The flow continued to advance over the harbor to destroy twenty ships anchored offshore. The hurricane force of the blast capsized the steamship Grappler, and its scorching heat set ablaze the American sailing ship Roraima, killing most of her passengers and crew. The Roraima had the misfortune of arriving only a few hours before the eruption. Those on board could only watch in horror as the cloud descended on them after annihilating the city of Saint-Pierre.

•   "Pelee" .  Global Volcanism Program .  Smithsonian Institution . 15 February 2017. Retrieved 20 Oct 2019.
•  Scarth, Alwyn (2002).  La Catastrophe: The Eruption of Mount Pelee, the Worst Volcanic Eruption of the Twentieth Century . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
•  Zebrowski Jr., Ernest; The Last Days of St. Pierre-The Volcanic Disaster that Claimed 30,000 Lives; P. 268; Rutgers University Press: 2002