61 Blowing Their Tops

The eruption of Washington State’s Mount St. Helens in 1980 caught Americans’ attention because it occurred in a long line of spectacular volcanic eruptions that have occurred over the past hundred years, many resulting in far more damage and loss of life.

In 1902, Mount Pelée in Martinique exploded, shooting out a huge cloud of burning gas and ashes that killed 30,000 citizens of St. Pierre. An 1883 eruption that blew the top off the island of Krakatoa, near Sumatra created a tidal wave that killed 36,000 people and spewed enough debris into the atmosphere in 1956, it is spit out 2.4 billion tons of rock—enough to bury the city of Paris. Although the volcano was in a remote area. But the eruption resulted in the deaths of over 29,000 people.

In February of 1943, near the Mexican village of Paricutín, a man watched a small crack in the ground begin to expand in his field. When a cloud of smoke and sparks forced him to earth working, Out of the shake. Rifted poured a column of smoke that was rising ashes on Mexico City, 200 miles away. Before the new volcano finally subsided, in 1952, it had created a mountain 1,200 feet high where Pulido’s cornfield had been.

61 火山喷发

1980年华盛顿州圣海伦斯火山的喷发引起了美国人的关注，因为在过去的一百年里，一系列壮观的火山喷发接连发生，其中许多造成了更严重的破坏和生命损失，而这次喷发正是其中之一。

1902年，马提尼克岛的培雷火山爆发，喷出的巨大燃烧气体和火山灰云导致圣皮埃尔的3万名市民死亡。1883年，苏门答腊附近的喀拉喀托岛火山喷发，炸掉了岛屿顶部，引发的海啸造成3.6万人死亡；1956年，一座火山喷出了24亿吨岩石——足以掩埋巴黎市，尽管这座火山位于偏远地区，但喷发仍造成了超过2.9万人死亡。

1943年2月，在墨西哥的帕里库廷村附近，一名男子看到自己田里的地面出现一道小裂缝并开始扩大。当烟雾和火星迫使他离开田地时，裂缝中喷出了一股烟柱，火山灰飘向了200英里外的墨西哥城。在这座新火山于1952年最终平息之前，它已在普利多的玉米地原址上形成了一座1200英尺高的山峰。