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WONDERS OF NATURE
Martinique island. Nature miracle
In the picturesque green necklace of the Lesser Antilles, stretching in a long puff from Haiti and Puerto Rico to the mouth of the Orinoco River and further along the Venezuelan coast, there is an island with a particularly violent nature and a particularly turbulent history. Generally speaking, in the chain of volcanic islands washed by the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea, there are many beautiful and interesting corners. Cozy bays and coral buildings, proud cliffs and pearly shallows, palm-fringed beaches and fantastic outlines of coastal cliffs polished by the surf - what is there in the Antilles! Even the names of these islands sound exotic and musical, like the words of a thoughtful song performed somewhere on the shore to the rustle of palm trees and the splash of tropical waves: Dominica and Anguilla, Antigua and Guadeloupe, Barbuda and Curaçao, Saint Lucia and Blancuilla... On these fertile shores, fanned by the warm breath of the trade winds, humid mountain forests have grown luxuriantly, in places giving way to palm savannas. In the central parts of the islands there are cones of extinct and active volcanoes. Some of them, for example, Soufrière on Guadeloupe, Diablotin on Dominica or Mont Pelée (Montagne-Pelée) in Martinique, rise almost one and a half kilometers above sea level and serve sailors as beautiful natural lighthouses. The contrasting combination of harsh volcanic mountains and cheerful verdant groves at the foot of their basalt cliffs gives the Antilles some special charm. But the large island of Martinique, located in the very center of the Antilles island chain, is not known to the whole world because of its picturesque forests, banana plantations or endless sandy beaches, on which huge sea turtles crawl out at night.
Let's make a reservation right away that this island can be considered large only by Antilles standards - its area is slightly larger than the area of \uXNUMXb\uXNUMXbMoscow. But of all the Lesser Antilles, it is second in size only to Guadeloupe, and even then quite a bit. And world fame came to Martinique in 1902, and it came for tragic reasons. Central America in that year, in general, was extremely "lucky" for disasters. In January, there was a strong earthquake in Guatemala, destroying many houses and claiming thousands of lives. And in May there was a monstrous explosion of the Izalco volcano in El Salvador, which also caused a lot of trouble. In July, the Masaya volcano in Nicaragua began to erupt, and soon after that, the Santa Maria volcano in Guatemala. And again, villages were burning and destroyed, coffee, sugar and banana plantations were destroyed, people were dying ... But the tragedy that befell Martinique in May 1902 surpassed all natural disasters in this region in scale and has since been considered one of the worst volcanic disasters in history. Even the explosion of the Krakatoa volcano in Indonesia, which shocked the whole world twenty years earlier, pales before the disaster that has befallen Martinique. The horror that seized people when they learned the details of the monstrous and destructive eruption was aggravated by the fact that this eruption itself was very special, unusual. Before the tragedy in Martinique, nothing was known about such manifestations of the formidable underground elements. For half a century, the small Antillean port of Saint-Pierre flourished quietly at the foot of the Mont Pele volcano, almost oblivious to the puff of smoke that sometimes appeared over the top of the mountain. The volcano had already erupted in 1851, but then the eruption was weak and populated areas were not affected. Everyone was accustomed to Mont Pele, which so spectacularly closed the view from the sea to the panorama of the bay, and considered the volcano to be something like a beautiful scenery that complements the colorful tropical landscape of the city's environs. Sometimes on Sundays excursions were organized to the mountain, culminating in a fun picnic on the edge of the crater, which was only eight kilometers away along the green wooded slopes. In mid-April 1902, residents began to notice that the top of Mont Pele began to smoke heavily, but this did not alert or embarrass anyone. Meanwhile, the cloud of smoke thickened and darkened. From time to time, thick black clouds of smoke burst out of it with force, and the most curious St. Pierre, who climbed closer to the top, said that deaf underground shocks were heard on the upper slopes. Soon, excursions to the volcano ceased, as the layer of ash that covered the approaches to the summit made the stay at the top not very comfortable. The rumblings began to intensify, the column of smoke increased even more and turned black. Some cautious townspeople began to talk about a possible repetition of the events of 1851 ... But then the city was not in immediate danger, so they laughed good-naturedly at the alarmists. Animals were the first to worry. The snakes left their homes in the old lava crevasses on the slopes, descended to the coast and flooded the plantations and urban outskirts. The birds flew far around the island, and the turtles swam away from the coastal waters. The well-worn fishermen shared with their fellow countrymen bad forebodings: they were frightened by the unexpected appearance of deep waves during a complete calm and the sudden warming of the water in the sea. On May 5, a torrent of liquid mud, probably from the mixing of ash with water from a small lake that was in the crater, rolled down the slope of Mont Pele and flooded the sugar plantation and farm at the foot of the volcano, killing 24 people. The surviving peasants flooded the city, sowing panic. Something had to be done: the situation was getting serious. But the city authorities had their own concerns - elections were to be held next Sunday, and it was impossible to allow at least one voter to leave the city before the day of expression of will. Soothing announcements were hung around the city, allegedly based on the conclusion of the scientific commission. The governor himself arrived with his wife in Saint-Pierre from the capital of the island, Fort-de-France, to encourage the frightened and instill confidence in the voters. And, despite the unceasing roar of the volcano and every day the growing cloud, cut through by lightning discharges, despite the ever-increasing rain of ash falling on their heads, only a very few dared to run. Meanwhile, the city was living its last days. Soon the crater began to spew molten lava, and the ash formed a giant cloud that completely hid the sun and rained continuously on the city. Saint-Pierre was shrouded in darkness, the roar of the volcano became deafening, and the roar of explosions began to mix with it. For three days, the townspeople rushed about in a panic: distraught with fear, people ran out into the streets, hid in basements, sought salvation in churches. Then the volcano seemed to calm down. "Well, now things are going to decline, as in 1851," said the emboldened Saint-Pierres. However, some people still decided to leave the city, taking advantage of the lull. Some left in carriages and on horseback along the coastal road that connected the city with Fort-de-France, others sailed away by sea, since there were still a lot of ships in the harbor. But most of the thirty thousandth population of St. Pierre remained in the city, hoping for a close end to the natural disaster. On the night of May 7-8, the eruption intensified again, and panic began in the city. At dawn, all thirty thousand citizens, men, women and children, whites and blacks, rushed to the sea, seeking salvation on ships. But how many people could take two dozen small fishing schooners, standing at the piers? Meanwhile, the mountain, which towered over the terrified crowd, spewed fire, the noise became deafening. About eight o'clock, the forces of the earth hid for a moment, as if giving people the opportunity to say goodbye to life, and then a thunderous blow followed, as if thousands of guns thundered at once, a red-hot cloud flew out of the crater and rolled down the slope towards the city like a wall of fire with incredible speed. Thousands of people on the embankment, as if numb, watched as the cloud flew at them. In three seconds she covered the eight kilometers separating the crater from the embankment, and Saint-Pierre disappeared, swept away by a wall of fire. The compressed air, which the cloud drove in front of it, in one fell swoop threw into the sea the entire thirty-thousandth crowd that had accumulated on the shore. In a moment the water in the harbor boiled, in a huge cloud of steam the ships capsized and sank or burned like torches. Only two capsized ships did not sink, and several of their crew members, although badly injured and scalded by boiling water, survived the disaster. Meanwhile, thousands of barrels of rum were exploding in the warehouses of the sugar factory, and the infernal flaming "punch" made its way through the ruins to the sea, burning out what the fiery element had not yet completely destroyed. In the afternoon, the sailors of the cruiser "Suchet", which came to the rescue from Fort-de-France, landed on the shore, but, apart from charred corpses and ruins, nothing could be found in the place where the city of Saint-Pierre stood half a day ago. Only three days later, sailors digging out the ruins were attracted by someone's screams coming from somewhere below. It turned out that in the punishment cell of the local prison - a stone cellar with no windows - an old black man miraculously survived, planted there for some kind of offense. The thick walls of the basement saved him from the heat, and he, the only one of all the townspeople, survived the terrible catastrophe. Volcanoes have always caused, cause and will cause many disasters, but three terrible seconds of the city of Saint-Pierre after three weeks of carelessness and three days of panic horror will forever remain one of the most tragic pages in the history of mankind. What happened in Martinique caused not only universal sympathy, but also great scientific interest. The famous French geologist Lacroix urgently arrived on the island and spent many months there, studying a new, destructive type of eruption, which he called the "Peleian type", or "scorching cloud". After May 8, the eruption has not yet ended. Several times new scorching clouds rolled in the same direction. Only a year later did Mont Pele calm down in earnest. The volcanic eruption was accompanied by another interesting phenomenon. From its crater, after the scorching clouds descended, a column of viscous semi-solidified lava slowly began to rise. It looked like a giant cork, which the underground forces squeezed out of the vent. The column of lava rose for several weeks, resembling an ominous obelisk towering over a volcano. Scientists have called it the "needle of Mont Pele". After the final cessation of the eruption, rains and winds gradually destroyed the huge "needle". After 28 years, the eruption of Moi-Pele was repeated. Again, fiery clouds rolled down the slopes, but this time, fortunately, there were no human casualties. Scientists managed to accurately measure the temperature of the cloud: it was about a thousand degrees near the crater, and seven hundred degrees below, near the harbor. Over the past decades, nature and people have healed the wounds inflicted by a monstrous catastrophe. The town of Saint-Pierre was rebuilt again, the plantations of tobacco, sugar cane and cocoa were green again, and ships began to enter the harbor. But Saint-Pierre, once the largest city of the island, where a fifth of its population lived, could no longer reach the previous level, forever losing the palm to the current capital of the Republic of Martinique - Fort-de-France. And the fate of the "paradise town" on a distant Caribbean island, wiped off the face of the earth in three seconds, will remain for us a constant warning that volcanoes do not forgive carelessness and slovenliness, that the terrible troubles caused by underground forces can only be avoided by maintaining vigilance and treating with respect and caution to the mighty elements of the hot bowels of the planet. Author: B.Wagner
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