November 3, 2018 - Pliny the Younger was only 18 years old when he saw the disaster on August 24, 79 AD. The son of the elder Pliny who was in charge of the Roman Fleet at Naples, he had a unique vantage point from one end of the bay about 22 miles from the volcano. It is his letter to another Roman describing the events that give us the most details we have of the disaster.
No one realized the Vesuvius was a volcano then, let alone an active one. There had been a major earthquake in the area 17 years earlier but no one thought the mountain was the cause.
Just after Noon, following some tremors felt locally the mountain erupted sending a cloud 12 miles high. It released rock and ash at a staggering 1.5 million tons per second and had 100,000 times more thermal energy than the both atomic bombs dropped on Japan.
Pompeii was 7 miles down wind and at that time was on the coast. Our hotel would have been in the ocean. Over the next several hours the huge column of ash and stone began to feel the pull of gravity and start to fall. Most of the roofs of Roman buildings were made of wood. Pumice stones the size of apples hurtled down on the city. Tons of ash floated down like a hellish snow storm. People who sought shelter in homes would perish as roofs collapsed.
But the worst was yet to come. The sunlight was completely blocked from the sky. The ash and falling stones continued for hours. As the hours passed people tried to make it to the beach with what belongings they could carry. They hoped to find a boat could take them out only to find the water choked with pumice stones which float due to air pockets in them.
Some time around midnight the sides of the mountain released the first of five pyroclastic surges. Conceived in Hell, this is a fluidized combination of super hot (over 500 degrees) gas and rock that speeds down the mountain at high speed killing everything in its path. Most of the estimated 13,000 people who died here were killed by this terror.
The town was completely buried, literally frozen in time until it was rediscovered in the 1700’s. Only around 1200 bodies have been found. Scientists estimate many more are yet to be discovered. Over the years fascination with the city and the disaster has led to considerable looting of the archeological wonders that were preserved in the ash. Yet much remains and no other site in the world has given us so much information at what life was like in a typical Roman town.
It was like walking through a ghost town.
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