Volcanoes

dropdown A volcano is a mountain or hill with an opening through which steam, gases and lava from the centre of the Earth can escape into the air. And lava is a red-hot rock which comes to the Earth's surface through the volcano. It has a temperature of about 1,OOO degree Celsius- ten times hotter than boiling water! Lava can move as fast as 55 kph ... faster than most animals can run. dropdown There are about 850 active volcanoes in the world. About sixty percent are in an area called the Ring of Fire in the Pacific Ocean. The largest active volcano is Mauna Loa on the island of Hawaii. dropdown There are two types of volcanoes. They can be active an extinct. An active volcano can erupt at any time. Extinct volcanoes are volcanoes that have stopped erupting. dropdown A volcano erupts when there is a violent escape of gases and lava from the volcano. In 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius in Italy erupted, destroying the Roman city of Pompeii. The worst volcanic disaster in the twentieth century was in Martinique, a French Island in the Caribbean Sea. A volcano called Mount Pelee near the town of Pierre erupted in the morning of 8th May 1902. Of the 30,000 people in Pierre, just two survived. dropdown Nowadays, scientists usually know when a volcano is going to erupt. In 1991, the Pinatubo volcano, 100 kilometres northwest of Manila in the Philippines, began one of the largest eruptions of the twentieth century. Thanks to the scientists' warnings, more than 100,000 people left the area before the volcano erupted on 15th June.