Mt. Pelee

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Mt. Pelee
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General Information
Mt. Pelee is located at Martinique in the west
Indies at14.82N and 61.17W. Mt. Pelee is a
Stratovolcano. Summit elevation 1,397m. Mt.
Pelee has a deadly pyroclastic flow. Sense Mt.
Pelee is not that large, it has also been called
a lava dome.
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Recent Eruptions
Eruptions of Mt Pelee 929-32,
1902-05, 1851-52, 1792, 1635
In 1902 Mt. Pelee killed  29,000 people  
About 4 miles down slope to the south, a city
was demolished and nearly 30,000 inhabitants were
killed almost instantly.
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The Eruption of 1902
Mt. Pelee erupted a about 750 am May 8, 1902 in
St.Pierre. But before that Pelee had been
showing signs of increase in fumarole
activity. And on April 23 minor eruptions began
at the summit of the volcano.
Frightened animals fled for safety from the
volcano, an estimated 50 humans and 200 other
animals were killed by snake bites in the process.
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Survivors of 1902 Eruption
Survivors of the 1902 eruption and destruction
of the city of St. Pierre include a young
shoemaker by the name of Leon Compere-Leandre.
A 25 year old convicted felon by the name of
Louis-Auguste Cyparis. And a little girl by the
name of Haviyra Da lfrile.
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Young Shoemaker
A young shoemaker, Léon Compere-Léandre,
was sitting on his doorstep when the nuée ardente
hit. Although he was severely burnt he survived,
partly because of his good health, but also
because his house was near the edge of the
pyroclastic flow. Here is his experience, in his
own words
"I felt a terrible wind blowing, the earth began
to tremble, and the sky suddenly became dark. I
turned to go into the house, with great
difficultuy climbed the three or four steps that
separated me from my room, and felt my arms and
legs burning, also my body. I dropped upon a
table. At this moment four others sought refuge
in my room, crying and writhing with pain,
although their garmets showed no sign of having
been touched by flame. At the end of 10 minutes
one of these, the young Delavaud girl, aged about
10 years, fell dead the others left. I got up
and went to another room, where I found the
father Delavaud, still clothed and lying on the
bed, dead. He was purple and inflated, but the
clothing was intact. Crazed and almost overcome,
I threw myself on a bed, inert and awaiting
death. My senses returned to me in perhaps an
hour, when I beheld the roof burning. With
sufficient strength left, my legs bleeding and
covered with burns, I ran to Fonds-Sait-Denis,
six kilometers from St. Pierre."
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THE CONVICTED FELON
The only other known survivor in St. Pierre
became a minor celebrity. He was a husky
25-year-old roustabout named Louis-Auguste
Cyparis, locally known simply as "Samson". In
early April, Samson was put in jail for wounding
one of his friends with a cutlass. Towards the
end of his sentence, he escaped from a labouring
job in town, danced all night, and then turned
himself into the authorities the following
morning. For this, he was sentenced to solitary
confinement for a week in the prison's dungeon.
On May 8, he was alone in his dungeon with only a
small grated opening cut into the wall above the
door. While waiting for his breakfast, his cell
became dark and he was overcome by intense gusts
of hot air mixed with ash that had entered
through the grated opening. He held his breathe
while experiencing intense pain. After a few
moments, the heat subsided. He was severally
burned, but managed to survive for four days
before he was rescued by people exploring the
ruins of St. Pierre. After he recovered, he
received a pardon and eventually joined the
Barnum Bailey Circus, where he toured the world
billed as the "Lone Survivor of St. Pierre."
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The Little Girl
One of the most incredible escapes from Mt.
Pelée was that of a young girl named Havivra Da
Ifrile. Very early in the morning of May 8,
Havivra was on her way to services at the
catherdral in St. Pierre when her mother sent her
on an errand. She was to walk to her aunt's
pastry shop near a local tourist attraction known
as the Corkscrew. The "Corkscrew" was named after
a tourist trail that wound down into an ancient
crater, or parasitic cone, located halfway up the
flank of the volcano. As Havivra approached the
Corkscrew, she noticed smoke rising from the
crater. After looking into the crater, she
described it in this manner "There I saw the
bottom of the pit all red, like boiling, with
little blue flames coming from it." She
apparently saw three people trying to run up the
Corkscrew before they were engulfed in ". . . a
puff of blue smoke . . " and ". . . fell as if
killed." She fled toward St. Pierre.
"Just as I got to the main street I saw this
boiling stuff burst from the top of the Corkscrew
and run down the side of the hill. It followed
the road first, but then as the stream got
bigger, it ate up the houses on both sides of the
road. Then I saw that a boiling red river was
coming from another part of the hill and cutting
off the escape of the people who were running
from their houses."
Frightened, Havivra ran to the shore and jumped
into her brother's small boat and headed along
the shore to a cave that she used to play pirate
in with her friends.
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STRANGE BUT TRUE
Did you know that in October of that year, a
lava dome began to rise out of the crater floor.
It grew for a solid year into a gigantic shaft in
the form of an obelisk. It has been described by
many as the most spectacular lava dome produced
in historic times. It was 350 to 500 feet thick
at its base and it soared to over 1000 feet above
the base of the crater floor. It sometimes rose
at a remarkable rate, up to 50 ft/day. The huge
spine of lava became known as the "Tower of
Pelée." At night the sides of this magnificent
monolith was marked by traces of red incandescent
cracks from the still hot lava in its interior.
At its maximum size, the Tower of Pelée was
twice the height of the Washington Monument and
equal in volume to the Great Pyramid (Cheops) of
Egypt. It finally became unstable and collapsed
into a pile of rubble in March 1903, after 11
months of growth. No geologist had ever witnessed
the emergence of such an object before.
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Bibliography
1.http//www.msu.edu/carpen87/WebQuest/index.html
2. www.volcanolive.com/pelee.html 3.
http//volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/im
g_mt_pelee.html