La Catastrophe: The Eruption of Mount Pelée, the Worst Volcanic Eruption of the Twentieth Century

by Alwyn Scarth

Book Overview

On May 8, 1902, on the Caribbean island of Martinique, the volcano Mount Pel e loosed the most terrifying and lethal eruption of the twentieth century. In minutes, it killed 27,000 people and leveled the city of Saint-Pierre. In La Catastrophe, Alwyn Scarth provides a gripping day-by-day and hour-by-hour account of this devastating eruption, based primarily on chilling eyewitness accounts.
Scarth recounts how, for many days before the great eruption,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195218396
• ISBN13: 9780195218398
• Release Date: June 2002
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

AUTHOR AIMS TO CORRECT MISCONCEPTIONS

Volcanoes kill in many ways, and the the 1902 Martinique eruption is one of the rare volcanic eruptions; Pompeii being the other, to destroy a whole city through its eruptive gas cloud. Volcanologist Alwyn Scarth's book concentrates on the science of the disaster and focuses on the aftermath of the eruption. The islands are shown to have been hit by two eruptive blasts even after the main event on May 8th. While I did not find this the thrilling read that the Witts book was, it was certainly interesting enough. The author seems most eager to correct a number of misconceptions about the tragedy, and this is one of the most noteworthy aspects of the book. He says St. Pierre was not known as the 'Paris of the West Indies' at the time. There just wasn't enough there for anyone to justify such a term. And the prisoner Sylbarris was not in fact a murderer as commonly believed. He was in underground confinement for escaping a work detail earlier in the week. Scarth then over reaches a bit. The story of the governor trying to stop the populace from fleeing before the island's election is not only wrong, he says, but one of many 'lies'. Lies? This seems a harsh assessment, for though it may well be wrong, it would hardly be impossible or even implausable for this to have happened. What's more, most all concerned were killed and so cannot act to set the record straight. It is a jump indeed to conclude that everything said about them was deliberately falsified. Scarth also insists that there were more than two survivors, indicating a minimum of sixty-four. This is true, but only if you include the city's outskirts. There were indeed only two survivors in St. Pierre as most accounts state. Overall this is a fine work and is recommended. It gives us a whole new look at a catastrophe we thought we were familiar with. Most readers will want to read the other two books on the disaster mentioned by the reviewers here, at least to start.

VIVID DETAILS

Loved this book, could not put it down, felt like I was there. I want to keep reading .

A huge cloud of red-hot ash and gas shot down the mountain

The volcano Mount Pelée, on the Caribbean island of Martinique did not behave according to scientific expectations. Almost 27,000 people died on the morning of May 8, 1902 because, according to this book's author, no one had ever heard of a nuée ardente (pyroclastic flow) until after the destruction of Saint-Pierre.Instead of a relatively sluggish stream of lava, a heavy ash-fall, or the earthquake plus tsunami that many were expecting (including the scientific commission appointed by the island's governor), Mount Pelée exploded in a huge lateral blast of gas, dust, and rock. The superheated cloud raced down the side of the volcano with the speed of a hurricane-force wind and headed directly for the port of Saint-Pierre about five miles away.At 8:02 A.M., May 8, 1902 a businessman in Fort-de-France (an hour's boat trip down the coast of Martinique) was talking on the telephone with a friend in Saint-Pierre. The businessman relates that his friend "...had just finished his sentence, when I heard a dreadful scream, then another much weaker groan, like a stifled death rattle."Then there was silence. Nearly 27,000 people lay dead or dying at the other end of that telephone line, crushed by falling masonry, asphyxiated by the scalding breath of the nuée ardente, or incinerated in the resulting inferno. There were only two survivors in the city itself: a shoemaker; and a prisoner in a solitary confinement cell who happened to be sheltered in the lee of a hill at the edge of the city.Alwyn Scarth, former Professor of Geography at the University of Dundee begins "La Catastrophe" with the founding of Saint-Pierre in 1635, and the slaughter of the indigenous Carib population. Unfortunately, the French settlers never paused to question the original inhabitants' choice of name for the mountain that loomed on their northern horizon. 'Mountain of Fire' was renamed 'Bald Mountain,' and the colonists moved on to develop an economy built on slaves, sugarcane and rum without questioning the lack of vegetation on Mount Pelée's summit.Minor eruptions occurred in 1792 and 1851, causing occasional curious picnickers to struggle up the volcano's slope for a view of the new sulphur vents (soufrières) and hot springs.Memories of those harmless volcanic sputterings contributed to a false sense of security among residents of Saint-Pierre when Mount Pelée began hurling columns of ash into the air and steaming torrents of mud down her slopes in the spring of 1902.When "La Catastrophe" appeared in 2002, along with other, similarly-themed books that were hastened onto the shelves (and the remainder tables) during the centennial year of Saint-Pierre's destruction, its author separated himself from the pack by blaming the non-evacuation of the city on her residents' false sense of security, and on their ignorance of pyroclastic flows. He thoroughly debunks the myth presented by some of his fellow-authors, that the inhabitants of Saint-Pierre were forced to stay in tow

Outstanding study of the 1902 disaster.

It seems there has been a lot of attention focused on the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelee and its destruction of Saint-Pierre recently, and this book stands out as a wonderful account of the events surrounding it. Alwyn Scarth is an exceptionally literate writer and provides a very frank and objective analysis of the events before and after the eruption as well as copious detail on the eruption itself. His writing style is dry at times, but it is enhanced by the occasional wry humor and his portraits of the people of Martinique, especially those of Father Mary and the captain of the cruiser Suchet.Scarth presents a great number of original documents from a variety of sources (sometimes providing photos of originals such as French naval telegrams), and provides as many eyewitness accounts as possible. Although the eruption of Pelee is the subject of the book, Scarth spends a comparable amount of time on the society of Saint-Pierre and Martinique, particularly the apartheid-based social structure and contentious politics of the colony. He also makes an admirable attempt to show that past accounts that accuse Governor Mouttet of forcing citizens to stay in Saint-Pierre to vote are groundless, and he recounts the political arrogance of the post-eruption administration.Scarth also refutes several myths about the eruption, especially the belief that Louis-Auguste Sylbaris was the sole survivor and that 30,000 people or more were killed (the likely number is several thousand fewer). He presents Saint-Pierre as a busy and modern colonial city, but vehemently disagrees with any romantic notions of a "Paris of the East Indies." The geology here seems quite oriented to the European, and Scarth sometimes uses terms that may confuse Americans unfamiliar with volcanoes (he never equates the term 'nuee ardente' with the more common 'pyroclastic flow'), but his descriptions of the nature of stratovolcanoes and their nature is right on; he goes so far as to give Pelee a personality of sorts (describing the murderous volcano as sitting 'innocently under a clear blue sky' minutes after its terrible eruption) that seems to fit in well with the portraits of the other figures on Martinique. Like many accounts of disasters, there is plenty of 'if only... if only...' here, but Scarth does not seek to blame anyone here: there was simply nothing most residents of Saint-Pierre could do about Pelee. They had no idea what it was capable of, few could afford to move even to other parts of the island, and the city of Saint-Pierre logically seemed the safest place on the island with all of its resources. Nobody knew what a pyroclastic flow was, and the greatest fear was of an earthquake of the type that had damaged the island's capital of Fort-de-France in the past. The only figure to get skewered is the governor who succeeded Mouttet for his awful handling of the terrified residents of La Morne Rouge and his miserable management of the refugees.The images Scarth presents of the e