In 1993, USGS volcanologist Dr. Harry Dalton and his accomplice, Marianne, endeavor to get away from Galeras' emission in Colombia. In the departure, a piece of trash executes Marianne.
After four years, Harry is doled out by his boss, Dr. Paul Dreyfus, to research seismic movement close to Dante's Peak, Washington, a town that borders a torpid stratovolcano. Harry shows up at the town and meets with the civic chairman, Rachel Wando, and her kids, Graham and Lauren.
Rachel offers to accept Harry with them as they see her previous mother by marriage, Ruth, who lives at a lake t
of liquid magma. While investigating, they discover dead trees, dead squirrels, and even two individuals who were bubbled alive subsequent to swimming in an underground aquifer. Paul shows up with a USGS group that night, and they set up base to screen the well of lava. Harry accepts the aggravations to be indications of a looming emission, yet Paul differs and exhorts against giving a bogus caution. In any case, Harry attempts to persuade Rachel to get ready for a fiasco, while building up a relationship with her and the kids.
Seven days passes, yet albeit one of Harry's partners, Terry, is harmed in a quake and torrential slide in the highest point cavity, the spring of gushing lava gives no indications of genuine movement, and the USGS group starts planning to leave. Be that as it may, when Harry goes to bid farewell to Rachel, they find the town's water supply has been polluted with sulfur dioxide, and the following morning, seismic readings and gas levels rise significantly. At long last persuaded that the fountain of liquid magma will emit, and with the National Guard inaccessible until the following day, Paul allows Harry to put the town on alert. Before the gathering can clear the town, the emission starts. In the following disorder, Harry and Rachel go to recover the youngsters, just to discover they have gone to get Ruth, who won't leave her home. Similarly as they arrive at Ruth and the kids, a magma stream immerses Ruth's lodge and obliterates the vehicles the two players used to arrive. The five escape across the lake in a speedboat, yet the lake has gotten acidic because of sulfur-rich gases from the fountain of liquid magma, obliterating the engine and destroying the boat. Ruth leaps out of the boat to assist it with shoring, however supports extreme synthetic consumes and kicks the bucket the following morning with her family and Harry next to her.
The warmth from the fountain of liquid magma softens the glacial masses on the pinnacle, shaping a lahar which falls a dam on the stream driving into town. During a respite in the ejection, Harry and the Wandos take an officer's truck and set off back to town, where the National Guard is clearing the town. A scaffold over the lahar falls flat, and keeping in mind that the USGS group makes it across, their van and Paul are lost to the flood. Then, Harry and the Wandos are compelled to drive across a magma stream in their way, safeguarding Ruth's canine, Roughy, en route. At the point when they show up back in the abandoned town, they discover all departure courses gone. While recovering a misery radiobeacon, Harry learns the spring of gushing lava is expected for a more savage second emission. As he races for the town's unwanted mine, the spring of gushing lava detonates, and they scarcely make it to the mine before the town is overwhelmed and annihilated by pyroclastic streams. The USGS group, watching the emission from far off, assume Harry dead.
Harry drives the Wandos to Graham's previous clubhouse in the mine, just to acknowledge he left the signal in the truck. At the point when he returns for it, the mine breakdowns, almost squashing the truck and catching him inside. Harry at last figures out how to enact the reference point after much trouble.
A couple of days after the fact, Terry sees the guide has been actuated, and the USGS dispatches search and salvage groups. Harry and the Wandos are liberated from the mine, rejoined with Harry's group, and transported out by helicopter. As the credits roll, the camera container over the decimated town prior to going to the fountain of liquid magma, presently decreased to a caldera.