Top 10 Deadly Volcanoes

1. Mount Vesuvius
By Claire SuddathTuesday, Aug. 31, 2010

Christie's Images / CORBIS

Mt. Vesuvius, the active volcano that looms over

the Bay of Naples in southern Italy, has erupted
well over 30 times that we know of. And yet its
most famous eruption took place all the way back
in A.D. 79, when a multiday eruption of lava and
ash covered the cities of Pompeii and Stabiae in
ash. Pliny the Younger, author of the only surviving eyewitness account, described a sudden
explosion followed by blankets of ash that fell on people as they tried to escape. The total number of
Vesuvius' victims will most likely never be known, but archeologists are aware of at least 1,000.

2. Krakatoa
By Ishaan TharoorTuesday, Aug. 31, 2010

Martin Rietze / Westend61 / Corbis

In 1883, the volcano on the Indonesian island of

Krakatoa erupted with 13,000 times the power of
an atomic bomb. The sound of the spewing
smoke and rock was reportedly heard thousands
of miles away, as far as islands off the eastern
coast of Africa. Hundreds in a nearby Sumatran
town died almost instantly when flaming ash incinerated their homes, and many more were washed
away by subsequent megatsunamis. An estimated 36,000 or so perished in total. Krakatoa itself then
slumped into the boiling depths of the ocean, but a new island at the site was spotted in 1927, and it
still occasionally spits lava into the sky. It's been dubbed Anak Krakatoa, or Child of Krakatoa.
3. Mount St. Helens
By Kayla WebleyTuesday, Aug. 31, 2010

Steve & Donna O'Meara / National Geographic Creative / Getty

Images

Mount St. Helens was getting ready to burst for

nearly two months before it exploded, not to
mention the more than 120 years it lay dormant.
While the eruption was anticipated, the manner
in which it occurred was completely
unprecedented. At 8:32 a.m. on May 18, 1980, a 5.1-magnitude earthquake triggered a sideways blast
that swept the mountain's north face away into a cascading landslide that shot hot ash and stone out
some 15 miles at speeds of at least 300 m.p.h. At the same time, a mushroom-shaped plume of ash
shot 16 miles into the air, eventually covering three states. Complete darkness blanketed Spokane,
Wash., a city about 250 miles northeast of the volcano. When the ash came down it fell in the form of
black rain that literally coated the residents of Washington, Idaho and parts of Montana with a fine
gray powder. Fifty-seven people and thousands of animals were killed, and some 200 square miles of
trees were obliterated. In 1982, Congress and President Ronald Reagan designated the surrounding
land as the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument.

4. Mount Tambora
By Alexandra SilverTuesday, Aug. 31, 2010

Atli Mar Hafsteinsson / Nordicphotos / Corbis

The Volcanic Explosivity Index goes up to 8. On

that scale, the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora
rates a very destructive 7. The explosion took
place on the island of Sumbawa (then in the
Dutch East Indies, now in Indonesia) and
plunged the region into darkness, but its effects
were anything but isolated. Tens of thousands of
people were killed by the apocalyptic eruption, subsequent tsunamis and ensuing starvation and
disease. The largest volcanic eruption in recorded history changed the world's climate so much (even
crops in Europe and North America failed) that 1816 became known as "the year without a summer."
Tambora itself shrank several thousand feet and traded its peak for a massive crater at its summit.
5. Mauna Loa
By Kayla WebleyTuesday, Aug. 31, 2010

Roger Ressmeyer / CORBIS

It's fitting that the state created out of a chain of

volcanic islands would be home to the world's
largest volcano. Mauna Loa is located on the Big
Island of Hawaii and in addition to being the
largest, with a summit nearly 13,700 feet high, it
is also one of the world's most active. Since 1843,
Mauna Loa has erupted 33 times, most recently in 1984. At 60 miles long and 30 miles wide, Mauna
Loa, the name of which fittingly means "Long Mountain" in Hawaiian, takes up about half of the Big
Island. Its mass also amounts to 85% of all the other Hawaiian Islands combined.

6. Eyjafjallajokull
By Alexandra SilverTuesday, Aug. 31, 2010

Arctic-Images / Corbis

It was like an overly contrived disaster flick: A

mammoth cloud of ash from an Icelandic volcano
creeps across the European continent, shutting
down airports and stranding hundreds of
thousands for days. Across the globe, people
curse the volcano or attempt to, since few
can actually pronounce the name Eyjafjallajokull. And despite all our technological prowess, human
ingenuity is shown to be futile in the face of an ash plume.

Eyjafjallajokull, whose name means "Island Mountain Glacier" in Icelandic, first erupted this year on
March 20. But it was the eruption that began April 14 that wrought all the havoc, ultimately costing
the airline industry more than $1 billion.
7. Mount Pele
By Frances RomeroTuesday, Aug. 31, 2010

Pete Turner / Stone Sub / Getty Images

Mount Pele, standing more than 4,500 feet high

on the French Caribbean island of Martinique,
erupted violently in May 1902, killing nearly
30,000 people effectively the entire port city of
St. Pierre. The catastrophe was so devastating
that the term pelean to describe that particular
kind of ash, gas and fiery cloud eruption became part of volcanic vernacular. There had been
warnings of steam, light earth shocks and raining ash, but they were ignored. After the town was
wiped out, Pele went dormant for some months, until geologists discovered a lava dome, dubbed
the tower of Pele, that rose to more than 1,000 feet above the crater floor before eventually
crumbling in March 1903.

8. Thera
By Ishaan TharoorTuesday, Aug. 31, 2010
World History Archive / Alamy

Some 3,500 years ago, an event of cataclysmic

proportions rocked the Mediterranean. The
volcano at Thera (later known as the Greek island
of Santorini) exploded with what is estimated at
four to five times the eruptive force of Krakatoa
in 1883, blowing a hole into the Aegean isle and
sending out shock waves that, according to
historians, would reverberate for centuries to come. The great seafaring Minoan civilization, the
dominant Greek culture of the time, potentially withered away after clouds of ash enveloped its cities
and great tsunami waves smashed its fleets. Stories of a world-shaking eruption linger in legends
across the Mediterranean. For years, adventure-seeking archaeologists have even pored through
Thera's geological record in search of the fabled lost city of Atlantis. Ancient Egyptian stela from
roughly the same era chronicle a volcanic storm that "caused darkness in the Western region" and
"annihilated" towns and temples alike. And some biblical scholars have even suggested Thera's
destructive effects underlie the Old Testament's tales of God-sent plagues and devastation.
9. Nevado del Ruiz
By Josh SanburnTuesday, Aug. 31, 2010

Jonathan Utz / AFP / Getty Images

The eruption was small in volcanic terms, that

is producing only about 3% of the ash ejected
by Mount St. Helens in 1980. Instead, it was the
mudflows that made Colombia's 1985 Nevado del
Ruiz explosion the second deadliest in the 20th
century and the fourth deadliest in recorded
history. The volcano has been blowing its top since the Pleistocene era and has erupted three times in
modern history, including in 1595 and 1845. But on Nov. 13, 1985, a relatively small explosion
unleashed floods that swept away 1,500 people on one side of the mountain. On the other side was
the town of Armero, the site of the worst destruction. 25-m.p.h. lahars (volcanic mudflows)
obliterated the town and blanketed it in gray muck. When the landslides subsided, 23,000 people
had died and damage was estimated at $1 billion one-fifth of Colombia's GNP at the time.

10. Mount Pinatubo

By Josh SanburnTuesday, Aug. 31, 2010

Roger Ressmeyer / CORBIS

When Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, the

amount of sulfuric ash it sent into the
stratosphere cooled global ground temperatures
by 1F for the next two years. To be fair, it hadn't
erupted for six centuries, so there was some
catching up to do. A year before the eruption, a
7.8-magnitude earthquake struck about 60 miles northeast of Pinatubo, causing landslides and an
increase in steam emissions from one of the volcano's geothermal areas, ultimately setting the stage
for the 1991 explosion. While the eruption resulted in more than 700 deaths, many scientists
predicted the explosion, thus saving the lives of an estimated 5,000. Still, the eruption produced one
of the most dramatic environmental scenes ever witnessed. With ash that rose 22 miles into the sky,
it is considered the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century.