The eruption of Mount Pelée is considered the most devastating volcanic disaster of the twentieth century. Volcanic activities had been heating up the mountain’s crater lake in the weeks before the event. When the crater shroud could no longer withstand the pressure, an avalanche of hot mud leaked out on May 5, 1902, but missed Martinique’s capital, Saint-Pierre; the city was safe for the moment. Only three days later, another eruption caused a flow of rock fragments and hot gas to pour on the city. The main explosion ravaged an area of 58 square kilometers and destroyed the entire capital. According to various event records, only three inhabitants survived. About 15 percent of the island’s overall population, 30,000 people, lost their lives. The catastrophe of Mount Pelée became the prototype for peléan eruptions and marked the onset of modern vulcanological studies of the behavior of pyroclastic flows.
- Scarth, Alwyn. La Catastrophe: The Eruption of Mount Pelée . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
- Zebrowski Jr., Ernest: The Last Days of St. Pierre: The Volcanic Disaster That Claimed Thirty Thousand Lives. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002.