Breaking News: Volcanoes

2 page colour fact sheet

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On Nov. 13, 1985, at a little after 9 p.m. local time, Nevado del Ruiz, a volcano about 130 kilometers from Colombia’s capital city of Bogotá, erupted, spewing a violent mix of hot ash and lava into the atmosphere. Less than three hours later, the earth rumbled as mudflows towering nearly 30 meters high swept through the countryside, several villages and eventually the town of Armero, where it killed 70 percent of the town’s residents. All-told, these mudflows, called lahars, killed more than 23,000 people.

1985: Volcano kills thousands in Colombia
About 20,000 people are feared dead after a volcanic eruption in northern Colombia.

The Sydney Morning Herald revisits the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, which caused destruction on an almost unimaginable scale and resulted in at least 36,417 deaths.

On the night of May 2, however, a small eruption commanded the town’s attention. Witnesses said Pelée’s summit seemed to catch fire, spewing glowing rocks and rendering the midnight sky incandescent. The next morning, residents found birds that had plummeted from the air, weighted down by ash, and a steamer captain noticed dead fish floating in the sea, possibly killed by the shockwave of a submarine earthquake.

The world's worst volcano disaster.
At 8am on 8 May 1902, Mount Pelée blew its top, sending a massive cloud of incandescent gas hurtling down its flanks. Travelling at more than 100mph, it struck St Pierre at 8.02am.

Three minutes later, the 'Paris of the West Indies' lay in ruins, its 30,000 inhabitants suffocated and burnt. Only one person survived: Auguste Ciparis, the sole occupant of the city's dungeon.

On March 17, Mount Vesuvius began an eruption that, over the ensuing week and a half, rained down rocks the size of basketballs, covered some areas with up to a meter of ash, and released a slow-moving wall of volcanic rock, lava and debris that crushed and burned everything in its path. U.S. newsreels recorded the eruption and the evacuation of San Sebastiano’s residents, who, assisted by Allied soldiers, piled household goods and belongings onto wagons as lava advanced toward the village.

12 images from 1944

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When Mount St Helens erupted on 18 May 1980, the resulting devastation of the area around the volcano left many stunned at the sheer scale of the destruction. More than 200 square miles (over 500 square km) of what had been a vast green blanket of pristine forest, clear mountain streams and tranquil lakes was now a monotonous grey ash-covered wasteland of fallen timber, steaming pumice plains, barren mudflows and avalanche debris.