Word: mount
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...Mount Pelee, a long-dormant volcano on the island of Martinique, exploded, sending a huge cloud of dust, steam and gas, believed to be as hot as 1,800° F over the town of Saint-Pierre. Within minutes the town was a smoldering ruin, and 29,933 inhabitants were dead. Only four residents are known to have survived, including a convicted murderer who was imprisoned in a dungeon cell...
...Mount Katmai, in Alaska's remote Aleutian Range, belched a 15-mile flood of lava. There were no known fatalities, but it was the largest blast in North American history-ten times the magnitude of the one at Mount St. Helens...
From the moment Mount St. Helens began acting up, dozens of scientists flocked to its flanks to plant instruments and set up observation posts. Indeed, until last week's eruption, the scientists hovered over the mountain almost as intently as parents do over a precocious child. Geologists even flew curiosity, over the fuming crater. Why the seemingly foolhardy curiosity, which almost surely cost the lives of three investigators? Explains one researcher: "Volcanoes are windows through which the scientist looks into the bowels of the earth...
Today there are some 600 active volcanoes on the earth's surface. Many of them, times Mount St. Helens and other volcanoes of the American North west, rim the Pacific along the so-called Ring of Fire, which sweeps from the tip of South America north to the Aleutians and Japan, down to New Zealand. More are hidden under the sea. The ancients were convinced that eruptions occurred because of the anger of the gods; today's scientists have a more modern theory. It is generally believed that the giant, continent-size plates forming the earth...
...used commercially as cement additives, as ingredients in pharmaceuticals and in the production of soaps and cleaners. Some engineers are talking of tapping the heat of volcanoes directly (by circulating water through them); one such energy source under study by the U.S. Geological Survey is Oregon's Mount Hood...