Mount Pelee eruption. Historical illustration of people fleeing the erupting Mount Pelee, on the Caribbean island of Martinique during the eruption of May 1902 that destroyed the town of Saint-Pierre. This eruption produced a pyroclastic flow - a cloud of burning ash and gas below the eruption column, which rolls down the slopes of the volcano. Pyroclastic flows incinerate everything in their path, and this one killed some 30,000 people within minutes. Image from Le Petit Parisien newspaper, France, 8th June 1902.