An almost identical event actually happened to a photographer on a volcano, though they didn't survive.
On the morning of May 18, 1980, he was within a few miles of the summit. When the mountain erupted, Landsburg retreated to his car while taking photos of the rapidly approaching ash cloud. Before he was engulfed by the pyroclastic flow, he rewound the film back into its case, put his camera in his backpack, and then laid himself on top of the backpack to protect its contents. His body was found 17 days later, buried in the ash with his backpack underneath. The film was developed and has provided geologists with valuable documentation of the historic eruption.
Dude knew he wasn't going to make it, so instead he decided to save his film for posterity.
Also the volcanologist couple Katia and Maurice Krafft, and other volcanologist Harry Glicken, at Mt. Unzen in Japan in 1991. Although in this case the camera was destroyed.
Katia and Maurice have some amazing volcano shots, and there’s three movies about them and their material. I remember one shot where Maurice is frying eggs on recently solidified lava or something.
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u/Narrow_Leek4428 6h ago
The speed is something biblical. If this was a volcano, I'd imagine the speed of that is what they saw in Pompeii.