Category 5

From New Scientist (UK)

Reviewed by Sue Bowler
IT IS all too easy, as a geologist, to be so carried away by the fascination of natural disasters that you forget the human cost. The eruption of Mount Pelée a hundred years ago on the island of Martinique in the Antilles is often cited as an example of an eruption producing pyroclastic surges--the turbulent, hot avalanches of ash and gas that can travel kilometres from erupting volcanoes at speeds of hundreds of kilometres per hour. One such surge overran the town of St Pierre, 7 kilometres away, in a matter of minutes, killing almost everyone in its path. Some 30 000 people died.

Ernest Zebrowski tells the story through eyewitness accounts and contemporary journalism, interspersed with his own words. His account begins by weaving together the stories of selected citizens: the colonial governor, Louis Mouttet; election candidate and plantation owner Ferdinand Clerc; editor of the local newspaper and political activist Andréus Hurard; and scientists such as the French volcanologist Gaston Landes, among others. Letters, telegrams and diaries written by those who subsequently died and the accounts of survivors give some idea of the impact of this eruption on people whose idea of volcanoes had been shaped by the relatively benign eruptions of basaltic volcanoes such as Etna and Stromboli.

For any geologist reading this book, the shadow of what is to come falls darkly on the scene-setting accounts of everyday life in St Pierre. I found the first chapters rather like the opening of a disaster movie: they introduce the main characters and invite you to wonder who will live and who will die. It's a very human account. By putting the people and their reactions first, Zebrowski draws out the common threads in sudden devastation: the difficulty in believing that anything so out-of-the ordinary will happen, the attempts to carry on as normal and the anguish, fear and regret in the aftermath.

But this is also a scientific account of geological observation, exploration and discovery, including the gradual resolution of historical puzzles such as how the people at Pompeii actually died. The author makes a clear distinction between explaining how volcanoes like Pelée are now thought to work and explaining what was known about them in 1902, so that this book also functions as an introduction to volcanology.

Zebrowski considers what seems a very modern aspect of the eruption: this was a public disaster, reported around the world, sometimes clearly, sometimes not, and geologists as well as journalists were dispatched to Martinique. This allowed geologists such as Angelo Heilprin and Alfred Lacroix to document the new features of this type of eruption--and Zebrowski reprints some of their photographs and drawings. But, just as today, the worldwide newspaper interest and the urge to have the news first meant that mistaken reports were copied and perpetuated, adding to the confusion over this new type of volcano.

Zebrowski devotes considerable space to the newspaper accounts, giving a vivid picture of the reaction round the world. He also traces the conflicting reports about what had happened and the wealth of contradictory evidence about how people had died. Survivors were horribly burned, yet some of the dead looked untouched, still sitting down to breakfast or holding a dainty handkerchief to their mouths.

Volcanology has come a long way in the century since Mount Peleé and we now know a lot more about the behaviour of such volcanoes, including Mount St Helens and Mount Unzen. The science is fascinating. What Zebrowski also makes clear through his account is just how terrifying such eruptions are. 1/​14/​2002

Sue Bowler edits the Journal of the Royal Astronomy Society.


From Booklist

Following his absorbing survey of the science behind natural disasters, Perils of a RestIess Planet (1997), Zebrowski here concentrates his attention on a single catastrophe, the volcanic annihilation of the French Caribbean city of St. Pierre in 1902. He reconstructs the disaster with an eye to exonerating the governor of Martinique, Louis Mouttet, who died in the event. Blame was heaped on Mouttet for not evacuating St. Pierre before it was incinerated by a volcanic eruption. The best Zebrowski offers in Mouttet's defense was his ignorance of the danger, the possibility that a warning cable he sent might have been destroyed, and a hesitancy to take action because of political concerns about an election campaign. In any event, complacency was not the sole reserve of the governor. In its final edition, the local rag assured worrywarts, "Where better could one be than in Saint Pierre?" Liberally quoting the accounts of stupefying shock experienced by surviving witnesses, Zebrowski successfully recounts the feel of this memorable cataclysm.
--Gilbert Taylor


From Publishers Weekly

The eruption of Mount Pelée 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 Zebrowski (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 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.


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 History of the Circle) examines both the geologic situation and the social and political conditions that led the French authorities to concentrate as many people as possible in the path of certain death. This readable and entertaining popular history is well documented from French records, survivors' accounts, journalists, and scientific investigations. Highly recommended for public libraries and Caribbean collections.
--Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army Combined Arms Research Lib., Fort Leavenworth, KS


From the Back Cover of The Last Days of St. Pierre:

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 thirty thousand humans died. The splintered rubble of their homes and belongings burned for three days, and the world learned of 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 their 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.



Excerpted from The Last Days of St. Pierre :

"I have come from hell."
--badly burned survivor Captain Edward Freeman, of the British steamship Roddam.

"I beheld the black vapor leap from the side of the mountain. Looking down on it as it rolled on to St. Pierre it seemed to me as if all Martinique was sliding into the sea. A great tongue of fire seemed to detach itself from the vapor to lick up all the water in the Roxelane River. The British Government's Residency was engulfed, as was every building around. Only the towers of the Cathedral of Saint Pierre remained untouched, and they only for a brief moment, for the fiery mass enveloped them, too, as it spread itself over all of St. Pierre. The mass was being constantly refueled by a huge stream of fire pouring out of the side of the crater to ravage an already devastated town. The cane fields were on fire, as were the plantations around the town. There must be so many victims, hundreds, possibly thousands, and from here there was nothing to be done."
--Father J. Mary, an eyewitness to the 1902 eruption of Mont Pelée.



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