SHORTLY before 8 o'clock on the morning of 8 May 1902, the bustling
Caribbean town of Saint-Pierre ceased to exist. Martinque's most
fashionable resort - the Pearl of the Antilles, Petit Paris - was engulfed
by an eruption from the nearby Mont Pel�e, a volcano confidently believed
to be extinct. The warning signs had been there for months, if not years,
but went unread. In a few short minutes something terrible raged through
the town, burning and demolishing buildings and incinerating ships in the
harbour. Rescue parties were unable to land for hours due to the intense
heat. No one knows for sure how many people died, but the population at the
time was estimated to be 30,000, and not one was left alive. Or so they
thought.
Peter Morgan recounts the story of the disaster, set against the backcloth
of French colonial politics, and traces the Pierrotins' strangely detached
relationship with their volcano over a period of more than three centuries.
He also describes the subsequent scientific expeditions, often undertaken
in hazardous circumstances, that gradually pieced together what had
happened and gave a name to a new phenomenon in vulcanology.
The people of Saint-Pierre were the first recognised victims of a nu�e
ardente, an incandescent avalanche of hot gas, dust, ashes and rocks that
burst from Pel�e's summit and swept down the hillside and through the town
at around 160 kilometres an hour. It was the prototype for what
vulcanologists now call a Pelean eruption.
At least one man survived the inferno. The nominal subject of the book is
one Ludger Sylbaris, a 27-year-old plantation worker shut up in the town
jail for brawling. On the morning of the disaster he was waiting for his
breakfast when the nu�e ardente struck. Protected by the thick stone walls
of the windowless cell, he knew nothing of the surrounding conflagration
other than the searing smoke that poured in through the grille in the door.
Rescuers found him alive in the ruins of the prison four days after the
eruption. His burns attested to his experience, and Sylbaris became
something of a celebrity. He was last seen touring the US with Barnum and
Bailey's travelling circus as "The Most Marvellous Man on Earth", "the Only
Living Object that survived the Silent City of Death".
Tony Jones is a science writer based in North Wales
http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opbooks.jsp?id=ns23823
