As humans, we like to think that we are in control, that we have some kind of power over our life trajectory. Despite this delusion, the are often events that remind us of how powerless we really are in relation to environment in which we live. The eruptions of Mt. Pinatubo and Mt. Pelee are two examples of the devastation that can occur at the whims of mother earth. These two eruptions occurred nearly a century apart from each other, in different parts of the world: Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines in June of 1991, and Mt. Pelee on the island of Martinique in June of 1902. Comparing the warning signs, populace reaction, eruption, and consequences of these eruptions gives insight into not only the volcanic events, but also the When comparing the warning signs of the two eruptions, it is important to note that the technology and expertise available to document these signals were drastically different. Modern volcanologists monitoring Mt. Pinatubo were able to record data in the interior as well as on the exterior of the volcano, while the people of St. Pierre were …show more content…
Pinatubo and Mt. Pelee showed signs of increasing activity before their eruptions. These initial signs were similar in that they both emitted sulphurous gas in small explosions. The first observed signal for Mt. Pinatubo occurred with a series of small eruptions in spring 1991, and soon after three explosion craters were discovered to be visible. Mt. Pinatubo began to increasingly emitted sulfur dioxide, escalating from 500 tons per day to 5000 tons per day in just one month. Similarly, in January of 1902, months before the disastrous eruption from Mt. Pelee, the number and strength of the fumaroles on the summit crater began to increase. In March, Etang Sec, a small crater on Mt. Pelee, was discovered to be emitting sulphurous vapors. This increase in sulphurous emissions in both volcanoes signaled that magma was rising beneath the surface, but did not guarantee that an eruption would