THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED

The last days of St. Pierre, Martinique, were far more devastating than Pompeii; the casualties of the former are computed at close to 0,000 as against the 1,000 of an (un?) official count of the earlier holocaust. The initial rain of ashes with the effect of tear gas was followed by days and nights of flood and further fulminations. At the end, St. Pierre was only ""a dead town filled with dead people"" and very few survivors. The authors, from earlier book, press and periodical coverage have retold the sad story with a mobile camera unit technique which shifts from individual to incidents, but without quite the immediacy of Walter Lord's litanies of disaster. One can then question the ambulance-chasing potential although it seems soundly reconstructed.