Plot hole: When they are trying to find a way to stop the lava from going in to the museum, Tommy Lee Jones has an idea to push a bus up against the museum to divert the lava. The plan works but the lava does not melt the bus like it melted Tommy Lee Jones' car or the fire truck. Even though the bus melts later in the movie, it doesn't melt it instantly like it did with the fire truck.
Volcano (1997)
1 plot hole
Directed by: Mick Jackson
Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Don Cheadle, Anne Heche, Gaby Hoffmann
Factual error: When lava engulfs the streets, aluminum light poles do not melt (it has a melting point of 1,212° Fahrenheit), yet entire vehicles with steel frames melt into the flow (steel melts at 2,750° Fahrenheit). Lava reaches around 2,000°.
Amy: Sometimes magma can find one of those fissures and rise up through it.
Roark: What's magma?
Rachel: Lava.
Roark: Lava? Right here in L.A?
Amy: It is one of the possibilities.
Roark: We have a history of that here in the downtown area?
Rachel: Paricutin... 1943, a Mexican farmer sees smoke coming out of the middle of his cornfield. A week later there's a volcano a thousand feet high. There's no history of anything until it happens. Then there is.
Trivia: The lava was primarily made of methylcellulose, the thickening agent used in fast-food milkshakes, and the ash was made mostly of ground newspaper.
Question: How could Stan and the train driver still be alive in such extreme heat and with lava just underneath them? Shouldn't it destroy their lungs? Shouldn't they get incinerated by the extreme heat of magma?
Answer: Yes, the chances of surviving those circumstances is completely impossible. Not just the heat, but also toxic fumes which will incapacitate you very quickly. At one point the soles of his shoes were melting, at that point you would have been dead. It's a heroic scene, but not very believable.
lionhead