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The Last Days of St. Pierre: The Volcanic Disaster That Claimed 30,000 Lives

Product ID : 18993503


Galleon Product ID 18993503
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About The Last Days Of St. Pierre: The Volcanic Disaster

Product Description On May 8, 1902, Mont Pelée on the island of Martinique exploded. A deadly cloud of steam and ash churned through plantations and villages, flattened the grand city of St. Pierre, then thundered into the bay where it sank eighteen ships and hundreds of smaller craft. Within a minute or two, nearly 30,000 humans died. The splintered rubble of their homes and belongings burned for three days, and the world began to understand the awesome power of nuées ardentes, glowing avalanches of hot gas and debris that sweep down the slopes of volcanoes, instantly steaming to death anything in its path. The enormous death toll was particularly tragic because it was avoidable. Had it not been for an unfortunate combination of scientific misjudgment and political hubris, most of the victims would have escaped.             In The Last Days of St. Pierre, Ernest Zebrowski Jr. counts down the days leading up to the catastrophe, and unfolds a tale intertwining human foolishness and heroism with the remarkable forces of nature. Illustrations contrast life in Martinique before and after the eruption, and eyewitness accounts bring the story to life. Although it seems a long time since the destruction of St. Pierre, it is a mere blink of an eye in our planet’s geological history. Mont Pelée will erupt again, as will Vesuvius, Krakatau, St. Helens, Thera, and most other infamously fatal volcanoes, and human lives will again be threatened. The St. Pierre disaster has taught us much about the awesome power of volcanic forces and the devastation they can bring. From Publishers Weekly The eruption of Mount Pele on the Caribbean island of Martinique in the spring of 1902 destroyed the entire French West Indies city of St. Pierre. A hundred years later, natural disaster buff Zebrowksi (Perils of a Restless Planet) has pulled together enough records to create a subtle though gripping account that combines powerful human drama (and tragedy) with a well-documented report of catastrophe in paradise. His account dwells on how easily the French bureaucratic order buckled like Walter Lord's A Night To Remember cast on an island fixed in a sea of cataclysms over the Atlantic Tectonic Plate. And like the Titanic disaster, this one came at just the moment when science (early seismometers were in place on the island) and undersea cable communications seemed capable of defending cities against forces of nature. Both St. Vincent's and Martinique suffered major volcanic eruptions in succession in April and May, but Zebrowski's premise that the colonial infrastructure of St. Pierre could have got many of the 30,000 who died out of the second volcano's way is somehow swept away by his own storytelling powers (his re-creation of the island governor's last cabinet meeting, for example). He is nearly as good as McPhee (Annals of the Former World) at making the earth move under the reader, and schadenfreude fans and historical disaster buffs will enjoy this one while perhaps in Paris some bureaucrat may yet be called to account. Illus. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal On May 8, 1902, Mont Pelee on the island of Martinique exploded. A vast cloud of superheated steam, ash, rocks, and debris descended on the port city of St. Pierre. In three or four minutes the entire population of the city, including many refugees from the surrounding countryside, died. The disaster attracted worldwide attention because it occurred in a prosperous French colony and was swiftly reported via telegraph. Numerous contemporary accounts, many ludicrously off the mark, attempted to describe the causes and effects of the eruption, but only with advances in volcanology over the last century have the real reasons for the explosion been largely explained. Mont Pelee was the first example of a pyroclastic surge to be examined by modern science, and observations there greatly assisted geologists in understanding volcanoes. Zebrowski (A H