92 Fun Facts About Volcano Disasters

Which volcano buried the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in AD 79?

Mount Vesuvius buried Pompeii in ash and Herculaneum under more than 15 metres of volcanic rock; both lay sealed until excavations began in the 18th century.

Which 1883 volcanic eruption produced the loudest sound ever recorded, heard thousands of miles away?

Krakatoa's climactic blast on 27 August 1883 was heard more than 2,000 miles away in Australia, and barometers around the world recorded its pressure wave as it passed.

Mount St. Helens' 1980 eruption began with the largest what in recorded history?

Landslide: a magnitude 5.1 earthquake shook loose the bulging north face, and its sudden collapse released the pressure on the magma inside the mountain.

What global climate event was largely attributed to the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora?

The immense amount of ash and aerosols injected into the atmosphere by the 1815 Tambora eruption caused global temperatures to drop, leading to widespread crop failures and the 'Year Without a Summer' in 1816.

Mudflows from which volcano buried the town of Armero in November 1985?

Nevado del Ruiz's eruption on 13 November 1985 was modest, but it melted summit ice into mudflows that ran tens of kilometres down river valleys and buried Armero, killing more than 20,000 people.

Mount Pinatubo, whose 1991 eruption cooled the whole planet by about half a degree, is in which country?

Philippines: Pinatubo, on the island of Luzon, blasted about 20 million tonnes of sulfur gas into the stratosphere, and the haze it formed cooled the globe by about 0.5 °C until 1993.

The c.1600 BC eruption of Thera buried Akrotiri, a settlement of which Bronze Age civilization?

Akrotiri was a Minoan town on Thera (Santorini), its frescoes sealed under ash; the eruption was long blamed for ending Minoan civilization, yet digs show it flourished for some time afterwards.

The Bronze Age eruption of Thera, today's Santorini, is often suggested as the inspiration for which legendary lost land?

Atlantis, in Plato's telling, sank into the sea in a single day and night; Thera's collapse into a flooded caldera invited the comparison, though the link remains speculation.

What is the collective term for all fragmented material ejected in an explosive volcanic eruption?

Tephra covers everything from dust to boulders; because each eruption's layer is chemically distinct, geologists use buried tephra beds as time markers to date sites across whole regions.

Which light-colored, highly porous volcanic rock often floats on water?

Pumice forms during explosive eruptions when super-heated, gas-rich magma cools rapidly, trapping gas bubbles and resulting in a very light, porous rock that can float on water.

Which eruption type produces the most explosive, sustained ash columns, reaching tens of kilometres high?

Plinian eruptions are named after Pliny the Younger, whose eyewitness letter likened the towering cloud to a pine tree: a tall trunk that spread into branches at the top.

In 1902 the city of Saint-Pierre on Martinique was wiped out within minutes by which volcano?

Mount Pelée's pyroclastic surge swept through Saint-Pierre on 8 May 1902, killing nearly everyone in the city; one of the few survivors, prisoner Ludger Sylbaris, was shielded by his thick-walled cell.

What chronic lung disease is the main long-term concern from inhaling fine volcanic ash?

Silicosis, a scarring of the lungs best known among stone-cutters and quarry workers, is the worry when ash is rich in crystalline silica; in the short term ash mostly aggravates asthma and bronchitis.

What is the name for a linear volcanic vent, metres wide but kilometres long, that pours out lava with little explosion?

Fissure eruptions open along a crack rather than from a single cone, sending up a long wall of lava fountains; the largest have flooded whole regions with basalt.

The 1783 Laki eruption, which caused widespread famine and climate impacts, occurred in which country?

Iceland's Laki eruption poured out lava and poisonous gas for eight months; most of the island's livestock died on fluorine-tainted grass, and the famine that followed killed a fifth or more of its people.

Which US national park sits atop a supervolcano that has had three giant eruptions in the past 2.1 million years?

Yellowstone's last giant eruption, some 631,000 years ago, left a caldera about 45 miles long; the same underground heat now drives the park's geysers.

The 'Ring of Fire', a zone of frequent earthquakes and eruptions, encircles which ocean?

The Pacific Ocean is rimmed by subduction zones, where one plate dives beneath another; that 40,000-km horseshoe holds most of the world's volcanoes and most of its earthquakes.

What volcanic type has a broad, gently sloping cone built from fluid basaltic lava?

Shield volcanoes are named for their profile, like a shield laid on the ground; their runny lava seldom explodes, so eruptions destroy property far more often than they kill.

Which Tanzanian volcano erupts black lava that weathers to white?

Ol Doinyo Lengai, the Maasai 'Mountain of God', is the only volcano known to erupt natrocarbonatite, a lava so cool that by day it flows black, like mud or oil, rather than red-hot.

A release of which gas from Cameroon's Lake Nyos suffocated over 1,700 people in 1986?

The Lake Nyos disaster was a limnic eruption, where a sudden overturn of deep lake water released a massive cloud of carbon dioxide, which flowed down the valleys and caused widespread asphyxiation.

Which active volcano, about 70 km southeast of Mexico City, frequently showers the region with ash?

Popocatépetl, 'smoking mountain' in Nahuatl, reawakened in December 1994 after decades of quiet; since then its ash and gas have repeatedly forced nearby towns to evacuate.

Oregon's Crater Lake fills the caldera left when which volcano collapsed about 7,700 years ago?

Mount Mazama emptied its magma chamber in one cataclysmic eruption and caved in; the basin that remained now holds the deepest lake in the United States.

Katia and Maurice Krafft were killed in a 1991 eruption of which Japanese volcano?

Mount Unzen's 3 June 1991 pyroclastic flow killed 43 people, including the Kraffts and American volcanologist Harry Glicken; the Kraffts' footage later became the basis of the documentary Fire of Love.

In 1982 a British Airways 747 lost all four engines in the ash cloud of which Indonesian volcano?

British Airways Flight 9 flew into Galunggung's ash on 24 June 1982 and glided from 37,000 to about 13,500 feet before its engines restarted; Captain Eric Moody had told passengers, 'We have a small problem.'

Which volcanic gas causes acid rain and forms 'vog' (volcanic smog) with atmospheric moisture?

Sulfur dioxide reacts with oxygen and moisture to make the acid haze Hawaiians call vog; blasted high into the stratosphere, the same gas forms droplets that reflect sunlight and cool the planet.

In what country would you find Mount Etna, one of the world's most active volcanoes?

Italy's Mount Etna towers over eastern Sicily; Greek legend placed the forge of Hephaestus beneath it, or else the giant Typhon, buried there by Zeus and blamed for its eruptions.

Which Sumatran eruption about 74,000 years ago is believed to have caused a 'volcanic winter'?

Mount Toba's eruption left the basin now filled by Lake Toba, about 100 km long; the theory that its volcanic winter nearly wiped out early humans is now disputed.

Which volcano's April 2010 ash cloud shut most of Europe's airspace for six days?

Eyjafjallajökull erupted beneath its ice cap: meltwater meeting magma set off explosions of fine ash, and prevailing winds drove the plume south-east across northern Europe, stranding millions of travellers.

Which Washington volcano, cloaked in more ice than any other peak in the lower 48, threatens Tacoma's suburbs with mudflows?

Mount Rainier's ice and weakened rock make it prone to lahars; tens of thousands of people live in its lahar-hazard zones, and schools in towns such as Orting hold evacuation drills.

Lava from which Congolese volcano, famed for its lava lake, poured through the city of Goma in 2002?

Mount Nyiragongo's lava is unusually runny and fast; in January 2002 flows from its flank ran through the middle of Goma, on the shore of Lake Kivu, and buried part of the city.

What steep-sided volcano type is built from alternating layers of lava and fragmented debris?

A stratovolcano's sticky magma traps gas until it bursts, so these peaks erupt explosively; Mount St. Helens and Pinatubo are both of this type, also called composite volcanoes.

Which Alaskan volcano, in today's Katmai National Park, produced the 20th century's largest eruption in 1912?

Novarupta was a brand-new vent: its eruption drained the magma beneath Mount Katmai, 10 km away, so Katmai's summit caved in and took the blame until volcanologists worked out the truth in the 1950s.

What is the term for large molten rock fragments that solidify into aerodynamic shapes in flight?

Volcanic bombs leave the vent as blobs of molten lava and are shaped by their flight, twisting into spindles and ribbons or cracking like bread crust as they cool; some land kilometres away.

Which Hawaiian volcano is known for frequent effusive eruptions and long-lived lava lakes?

Kīlauea erupted almost without a break from 1983 to 2018; when that 35-year run ended, its summit lava lake drained away and the crater floor collapsed.

Which instrument records the slight ground deformation of a volcano's flanks as magma swells beneath it?

A tiltmeter records minute changes in slope as magma inflates a volcano; before the 1980 eruption the north flank of Mount St. Helens bulged outward by more than a metre a day.

The eruption of Mount Agung in 1963 caused significant devastation on which Indonesian island?

Bali's Mount Agung had been quiet for 120 years when it erupted in 1963; pyroclastic flows and later mudflows killed well over a thousand people and left tens of thousands homeless.

The Deccan Traps, flood basalts that erupted as the age of dinosaurs ended, cover much of which country?

The Deccan Traps cover about 500,000 km² of west-central India; their gases were once a prime suspect in the dinosaurs' extinction, but the Chicxulub impact is now regarded as the primary cause.

Volcanic ash can stall a jet engine because the ash does what inside it?

Melts into glass: ash softens at about 1,100 °C, cooler than a jet's combustion chamber, so it fuses onto the turbine blades and chokes the airflow until the engine flames out.

The Valles Caldera, a prominent example of a resurgent caldera, is located in which U.S. state?

New Mexico's Valles Caldera collapsed about 1.25 million years ago; magma then pushed its floor back up into Redondo Peak, the dome that gave geologists their model of a 'resurgent' caldera.

Which type of lava flow is characterized by a smooth, ropy, or billowy surface?

Pahoehoe flows are hot and runny enough to keep a smooth skin; as the lava cools and stiffens downslope, the same flow can break up into rough, clinkery a'a.

Where is Mount Erebus, a volcano with a long-lived lava lake?

Mount Erebus, on Ross Island in Antarctica, is the world's southernmost active volcano; in 1979 an Air New Zealand sightseeing flight crashed into its slopes, killing all 257 people aboard.

Pyroclastic flows, which race downhill faster than a speeding car, are also called 'nuées ardentes', French for what?

Glowing clouds, or burning clouds: these avalanches of hot gas and ash glow red in the dark and typically move faster than 80 km/h, far too fast to outrun.

Which eruption type features mild, rhythmic explosions ejecting incandescent lava fragments?

Strombolian eruptions are named after Stromboli, the Italian island volcano whose small, regular bursts have continued for some 2,000 years and earned it the nickname 'Lighthouse of the Mediterranean'.

Mount St. Helens killed 57 people in 1980 when its blast shot out in which unexpected direction?

Sideways: the blast burst out of the mountain's north flank at more than 300 miles an hour and flattened forest across more than 200 square miles.

Lodge owner Harry R. Truman refused to leave his Mount St. Helens home beside which lake in 1980?

Spirit Lake lay at the mountain's foot; the site of Truman's lodge is now under about 150 feet of volcanic debris, and the blocked outlet raised the lake's surface by roughly 200 feet.

Volcanologist David Johnston's last radio call from Mount St. Helens in 1980 began with which city's name?

He was radioing the USGS office in Vancouver, Washington. His body was never found, though highway workers turned up remnants of his trailer in 1993.

Which California volcano's eruptions of 1914 to 1917 were the last in the Cascades before Mount St. Helens awoke in 1980?

Lassen Peak's biggest blast, on 22 May 1915, rained ash 200 miles to the east, and the area became Lassen Volcanic National Park the following year.

Before 1980, Mount St. Helens was nicknamed the American version of which mountain?

Mount Fuji was the comparison: the smooth, snowy cone was called the Mount Fuji of America until the 1980 eruption cut 1,300 feet off its summit and left a horseshoe-shaped crater.

Jailed Ludger Sylbaris survived Saint-Pierre's 1902 blast, then toured with which circus?

Sylbaris, nicknamed Cyparis, survived in Saint-Pierre's thick-walled jail cell and from 1903 toured with the Barnum & Bailey Circus, billed as 'the man who lived through Doomsday'.

What unusual feature rose about 300 m above Mount Pelée's crater within months of its deadliest eruption?

A lava spine, the Tower of Pelée, was squeezed up from the crater like toothpaste from a tube, reaching about 300 m before it crumbled away.

The 1883 Sunda Strait explosion was heard on Rodrigues, an island belonging to which nation?

Rodrigues is an outer island of Mauritius, nearly 3,000 miles from the volcano; listeners there took the distant booms for the guns of a ship offshore.

Which volcanic island first broke the sea surface in the late 1920s?

Anak Krakatau, 'child of Krakatoa', began erupting on the seabed in 1927; its first cones were washed away more than once before a lasting island stood above the sea in 1930.

Dust from Krakatoa's great eruption drifted around the Earth and gave the world a year of spectacular what?

Red sunsets glowed around the world for months as the fine dust circled the planet; the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote of skies more like inflamed flesh than ordinary sunset reds.

Tambora, whose 1815 eruption was the most powerful in recorded history, is on which island?

Sumbawa's Tambora stood about 4,300 metres high before April 1815; the eruption blew away roughly a third of the mountain, leaving a summit about 2,850 metres above the sea.

Which Hawaiian volcano, the largest active volcano on Earth, sent lava to within a few miles of Hilo in 1984?

Mauna Loa makes up half of Hawaii's Big Island and has threatened Hilo before: in 1935 military aircraft were sent to blast its lava flow off course before it could reach the town.

A ghost-story contest at Lord Byron's villa in the rain-soaked summer of 1816 produced which novel?

Frankenstein came to Mary Shelley during days shut indoors at Villa Diodati; the same contest led Byron's doctor, John Polidori, to The Vampyre, a tale that later influenced Dracula.

Which trapped young girl became the face of the 1985 Armero tragedy in a famous photograph?

Omayra Sánchez was pinned in the wreckage of her home for about three days while rescuers waited for equipment that came too late; Frank Fournier's photograph of her became the World Press Photo of the Year.

Most deaths in Pinatubo's 1991 eruption came from what, after Typhoon Yunya soaked the ash?

Collapsing roofs did the killing: the typhoon's rain soaked the ash into a heavy, wet blanket, and thousands of roofs gave way under its weight.

Pinatubo's 1991 eruption forced the United States to abandon which installation?

Clark Air Base, about 15 km east of Pinatubo, was evacuated days before the eruption and buried in ash; the US handed it over in November 1991, and Subic Bay followed in 1992 when lease talks collapsed.

Which indigenous people living on Pinatubo's slopes were displaced by the 1991 eruption?

The Aeta, indigenous hunter-gatherers of the Zambales mountains, had lived on Pinatubo's slopes for centuries; the 1991 eruption buried their villages in ash and forced them into lowland resettlement camps.

The Soufrière Hills volcano destroyed Plymouth, the capital of which Caribbean island, from 1995?

Soufrière Hills on Montserrat began erupting in July 1995; pyroclastic flows buried Plymouth by 1997, more than half the island was closed off, and two-thirds or more of the islanders left.

Which American statesman wrote in 1784 that a strange 'dry fog' had dimmed the summer sun and brought on a bitter winter?

Benjamin Franklin found the haze of 1783 so thick that a burning glass would scarcely kindle paper; he wondered whether volcanic smoke was to blame, and a distant eruption was indeed the cause.

Most victims of New Zealand's 2019 Whakaari eruption were on a shore excursion from which ship?

Ovation of the Seas had berthed at Tauranga that morning, and 38 of the 47 people on the island were on its shore excursion; the island's owners and tour operators were later prosecuted under workplace-safety law.

Experts classified the 2019 Whakaari / White Island blast as which type of eruption?

Phreatic eruptions are steam-driven explosions in which heated groundwater flashes to vapour without fresh magma reaching the surface, which is why the 2019 Whakaari blast came with so little warning.

Which Japanese peak erupted without warning in September 2014, killing 63 hikers?

Mount Ontake, Japan's second-highest volcano, blew just before noon on a Saturday in the autumn-colour season, with hundreds of hikers on its slopes; instruments picked up tremor only minutes beforehand.

The 2022 Hunga Tonga eruption column rose about 58 km, into which layer of the atmosphere?

Hunga Tonga's plume punched through the stratosphere into the mesosphere, and the blast lofted so much water vapour that the stratosphere's stock rose by about a tenth.

After the January 2022 Hunga Tonga blast, Tonga lost almost all outside contact because what was damaged?

Its undersea internet cable, the fibre link to Fiji, was broken about 37 km offshore; a repair ship could not restore it until late February, five weeks after the eruption.

The 85-day Cumbre Vieja eruption of 2021 took place on which Canary Island?

La Palma's Cumbre Vieja erupted from 19 September to 13 December 2021, the island's longest eruption on record; lava destroyed more than 3,000 buildings and built new land where it reached the sea.

Lava from the 2021 Cumbre Vieja eruption buried thousands of buildings and many plantations of which fruit?

Bananas are grown all over the island for export, and many of the farms lie on its west side, squarely in the path the lava took to the sea.

Which Guatemalan volcano buried the village of San Miguel Los Lotes under pyroclastic flows in June 2018?

Fuego's flows poured down the Las Lajas ravine on 3 June 2018 and buried San Miguel Los Lotes at its foot; more than 160 people were confirmed dead and hundreds more were listed as missing.

In Hawaiian tradition, which goddess of volcanoes makes her home in a crater on the Big Island?

Pele is said to live in Halemaʻumaʻu, a summit crater that has repeatedly held a lake of molten lava; many Native Hawaiians still regard the volcano around it as her home.

Galeras, whose 1993 eruption killed six scientists sampling gases in its crater, is in which country?

Galeras overlooks Pasto in south-west Colombia and is regarded as the country's most active volcano; the six scientists killed on 14 January 1993 were on a field trip during a volcanology conference.

Mount Lamington, whose 1951 eruption killed about 3,000, is in which country?

Mount Lamington in Papua New Guinea's Oro Province had not been recognised as a volcano until its 1951 eruption killed about 3,000 people; it is named after Lord Lamington, a former Governor of Queensland.

A lahar from which New Zealand volcano swept away the Tangiwai rail bridge in 1953, killing 151 people?

Ruapehu's crater lake burst through its natural dam on 24 December 1953; the lahar wrecked the Tangiwai bridge minutes before the Wellington–Auckland express arrived, in New Zealand's worst rail disaster.

After hot mudflows from Kelud's crater lake killed about 5,000 Javanese in 1919, what did engineers dig to tame the volcano?

Drainage tunnels lowered the crater lake by more than 50 metres, leaving far less water for an eruption to hurl down the slopes; the system has been rebuilt after later eruptions.

How did Heimaey islanders protect their harbour from Eldfell's advancing lava in 1973?

Pumping seawater onto it chilled the lava front into a solid wall and slowed the flow; when the eruption ended, the narrowed entrance left the harbour better sheltered than before.

Which Mexican volcano was born in a farmer's cornfield in 1943?

Parícutin burst out of Dionisio Pulido's cornfield and kept erupting for nine years, long enough for its lava to bury two villages.

Taal Volcano, which sits on an island in a lake, lies about 50 km south of which city?

Taal lies about 50 km south of Manila, on an island in a lake that fills an older caldera; ash from its January 2020 eruption fell on the capital itself and grounded flights.

Which Philippine volcano, famed for its near-perfect cone, buried the town of Cagsawa in 1814?

Mayon's 1814 eruption, its most destructive, killed more than 1,200 people; the bell tower of Cagsawa's church still stands above the buried town, with the symmetrical cone behind it.

The 1886 Tarawera eruption is blamed for destroying which famed New Zealand attraction?

The Pink and White Terraces, silica staircases on Lake Rotomahana once billed as the eighth wonder of the world, vanished when Tarawera erupted on 10 June 1886; researchers now think parts may survive, buried.

Huaynaputina's 1600 eruption, South America's largest on record, occurred in which country?

Huaynaputina, in southern Peru's Moquegua region, erupted on 19 February 1600; its sulfur haze cooled the Northern Hemisphere and has been linked to the Russian famine of 1601–1603.

Samalas, the vanished neighbour of Mount Rinjani that erupted in 1257, stood on which Indonesian island?

Samalas stood beside Rinjani on Lombok; in 2013 scientists matched it to a 1257 sulfate spike in polar ice cores, and the Babad Lombok records that its flows destroyed the kingdom's capital, Pamatan.

Most victims of Japan's deadliest volcanic disaster, a 1792 lava-dome collapse, died in what?

A tsunami did most of the killing: the falling dome, Mayuyama, plunged into the Ariake Sea beside Shimabara and raised a wave that drowned thousands on both shores of the bay.

Which Javanese city lies about 30 km south of Merapi, whose 2010 eruption killed more than 350 people?

Yogyakarta lies about 30 km south of Merapi; the October–November 2010 eruption killed 353 people and drove some 350,000 from their homes, and heavy rain then turned fresh deposits into damaging lahars.

KLM Flight 867 lost all four engines in December 1989 after flying into ash from which volcano?

KLM Flight 867 flew into Redoubt's ash cloud on 15 December 1989, a day after the Alaskan volcano began erupting; the nearly new 747 restarted its engines and landed safely at Anchorage.

From which town across the bay did Pliny the Younger witness the AD 79 eruption?

Pliny the Younger watched from Misenum, where his uncle Pliny the Elder commanded the Roman fleet; the elder sailed toward the disaster and died at Stabiae, and the nephew's two letters to Tacitus are the only surviving eyewitness account.

Which excavator devised injecting plaster into voids left by Pompeii's decomposed victims?

Giuseppe Fiorelli, who directed the Pompeii excavations from the 1860s, poured plaster into the hollows bodies had left in the ash; he also divided the city into the numbered regions and blocks still used to locate every house.

At Herculaneum, the skeletons of hundreds of fleeing victims were found crowded into stone vaults known as what?

The so-called boat houses line Herculaneum's ancient beach; hundreds of skeletons were dug from them from 1980 onward, overturning the belief that nearly everyone had escaped.

Vesuvius's March 1944 eruption wrecked B-25 bombers belonging to which air force?

The US Army Air Forces' 340th Bombardment Group was based a few kilometres from the volcano; hot ash burned the B-25s' fabric control surfaces and cracked their windscreens, wrecking about 80 aircraft.

Hawaii's 2018 lower Puna eruption began when the ground split open in which subdivision?

The first vent opened in Leilani Estates on 3 May 2018; two dozen eventually opened along the rift, lava filled Kapoho Bay in June, and about 700 homes were destroyed.

Tavurvur and Vulcan devastated which Papua New Guinean town in 1994, yet only five people died?

Rabaul was buried in ash when Tavurvur and Vulcan erupted on 19 September 1994; years of disaster planning meant residents had evacuated ahead of the blasts, and the provincial capital later moved to Kokopo.

The Campi Flegrei caldera, often called a supervolcano, lies just west of which city?

Campi Flegrei lies just west of Naples; part of the city is built over the caldera, much of which lies beneath the Gulf of Pozzuoli, and its ground rises and falls in episodes known as bradyseism.