Vesuvius, a beauty, couldn’t hold it any longer. Beneath the mountain seawater poured through fissures into Mother Earth’s fiery furnaces causing a titanic cataclysm, and in late summer79 AD she began a series of eruptions lasting two days, blowing clouds of blazing gases and volcanic debris ten miles high with catastrophic consequences for Pompeii.

The town was buried beneath up to 70 feet of hot ash, pumice and subsequent pyroclastic surges reaching the temperature of a pizza oven. The dog had no chance.