Corrected entry: Harry and Rachel call a town meeting because there is danger that the volcano is about to erupt, yet she chances leaving her kids alone at home instead of taking them with her.
Corrected entry: When Harry and Terry are on the volcano with Spider Legs and Terry breaks his leg, they need to call for a helicopter to come rescue them. How did they get up there? I don't think they were able to hike up the volcano, let alone hike up there with Spider Legs and their other equipment. After all, it took 4 people just to get Spider Legs off the rolling cart in the motel parking lot.
Correction: They may have been dropped off by the helicopter which was instructed to go back to land, and return at specific time since the pair may have planned to stay in the volcano for a while.
Corrected entry: Pierce Brosnan drives into the mineshaft to avoid the lava flow, but at the end of the movie, the car headlights are facing out.
Correction: This is definitely incorrect. The truck is shown several times with the front end still buried in the mine, with rescuers actually standing in the bed of the truck. The bulldozer then pulls it free, still rear-end-first. No headlights are anywhere to be seen, only the truck's taillights, and the split bed and truck boxes are prominently visible.
Corrected entry: When the helicopter crashes, Harry calls and asks his friend to send for the fire services. Isn't it likely that they are busy in the town helping to evacuate the people?
Correction: Yes. And as soon as Harry does so, Greg responds, "Jesus, Harry. O-kay." in a frustrated tone, implying that they've already got their hands pretty full, but he'll do what he can.
Corrected entry: If the Mayor and Harry know that the volcano would erupt soon, then why would they run the risk of letting the kids stay up on the mountain?
Correction: They don't do anything of the sort. Harry and Rachel drive up the mountain despite the dangerous conditions in order to get the kids BACK.
I think what they meant is why Rachel wouldn't keep her kids with her if she and Harry knew the mountain was gonna blow. After all, they asked why she left them ON the mountain, not basically that she abandoned them altogether and didn't care about their safety.
I think the point is the meeting they called was, as Harry stated, "precautionary". They didn't know when exactly the volcano was going to erupt - obviously it wasn't expected to go at that moment (obviously would be for dramatic effect) hence why Rachel left her kids in situ and would've started their own evacuation process had the meeting concluded without the volcano exploding.
Corrected entry: The scene takes place near the end when Dalton and the Wandos are in the boat, after the volcano starts to erupt. The water is really acidic and is making the boat disintegrate. When Ruth jumps out of the boat it burns her flesh. Before this occurred and during the boat melting, there were bodies of fish floating all over the lake.
Correction: Is this suggesting that the acid would have dissolved all the fish entirely? All of the dead fish are seen to be partially or mostly eaten away by the acid as well. Even strong acids take a while to act, and since the volcanic activity has only been going on for a short time, it hasn't been long enough to dissolve everything in the lake.
Corrected entry: Harry was able to drive across the lake as the truck he was in was fitted with a snorkel. The other cars that drove into the lake would have immediately stopped as the engines would have hydrolocked. Therefore the car that hit the truck wouldn't have been able to get there in the first place.
Correction: The car that hit the truck was floating, you can see the driver turn the wheel violently to try to avoid the truck but since the wheels weren't on the floor it had no effect.
Corrected entry: When Harry, Rachel, her children and Grandma are escaping from Grandma's cabin, the volcanic lava breaks through the wall and everyone runs out the door, but there is no way they could possibly outrun the lava, since it's flowing quite rapidly.
Correction: The front flow of lava moves very slow, the fastest recorded was 6 miles an hour. It's lava that's in already established flow channels that moves rapidly.
Corrected entry: When Harry and the Wandos are crossing the lake which has turned into acid, you can hear the motor coughing right before it stops; and Harry turns the motor into the boat, and sees that the propeller is destroyed by the acid. Even though the propeller is gone, the motor shouldn't just stop, it would still run, but the boat wouldn't move. The director probably did this so that the viewers would understand that the motor was destroyed.
Correction: Those types of boat motors use the water to cool itself by cycling the water through the internals of the motor. The acid would have indeed caused the motor to die by destroying it.
In Dante's Peak, it shows that the propeller was melted, but stainless steel melts at 2550 degrees Fahrenheit, and the water was only 2200 degrees Fahrenheit.
Water can only get to 2200 degrees Fahrenheit under VERY high pressure.
Corrected entry: At the end when they are rescuing Harry from the mine, we see a helicopter land and kick up tons of volcanic ash. Given the destructive nature of ash to the engine (as seen in the earlier scene), it would not make any sense to have a helicopter operate anywhere near the area.
Correction: The previous helicopter crashed because of the heavy ash in the air overwhelmed the engine. The later helicopter would presumably be equipped with an appropriate filter to protect the engine. Properly equipped, there's no reason a helicopter wouldn't be used as emergency transport, considering the likely state of the roads. While ash on the ground might moderately increase risk, helicopters are used routinely to fight forest fires.
Volcanic ash is extremely abrasive and corrosive containing parts of glass, dust and debris that will not only cause problems to the engine but will also damage the leading edge of the rotors, altering their aerodynamic abilities.
Corrected entry: When Rachel and Harry are crossing the river in the truck, they get obviously very wet. By the time they get to Ruth's lodge, they seem quite dried out.
Correction: There were a couple of hours that passed between them driving through the lake and arriving at Ruth's. It was daylight when they drove through the lake and pitch black when they arrived. Speaking from experience, the truck's heater would have dried their clothes in that time.
Corrected entry: When Graham and his sister are driving in the truck, there is ash and dirt falling from the sky. But at the same time when Harry and Rachel are driving in their truck to look for the kids, there is no ash or dirt falling.
Correction: They're further down the mountain - it hasn't reached them yet.
Corrected entry: When they are driving to escape the lava, the scene where the dog jumps in and is saved, they are driving through molten lava and their tires don't melt.
Correction: They catch fire - they're later seen driving on the rims.
Corrected entry: After the dead bodies are found in the hot springs, Harry asks Rachel, "Any idea who they were?" Rachel responds, "No. Never seen them before. Backpackers maybe." Rachel would have no idea if she's ever seen them, as the bodies were literally boiled and burned. (00:20:10)
Correction: Their clothes would have contained ID, therefore she could have gone off that information.
Corrected entry: When inside the boat going across the lake turned to acid, they are moving at a high speed. But all a sudden when they lose the prop, the boat is at a complete stop and actually turning. 2 problems with that scene. The momentum of the boat at a high speed would have continued moving it forward for quite some time. It would not stop all a sudden. And when he is using his shirt to row the boat, the boat would have turned, because he was only paddling on one side.
Correction: Long before the motor stopped they noticed that the acid was eating through the boat. By the time the motor stopped, the damage already done would have been enough to stop the boat's momentum. It also took a long time to dissolve the propeller, so their momentum would have also been affected as it was dissolving. In addition, you mentioned the boat was turning once they stopped but then said that the boat should have turned because of his paddling. It's possible that the paddling only kept the boat from continuing to turn while drifting.
Corrected entry: When they are crossing the river in the boat, the acidic water is eating through the blades of the motor, so Pierce Brosnan wraps his shirt around his hand to help them paddle manually, and nothing happens to his hand. Yet when Grandma, in her final heroic effort, leaps into the water to pull the boat ashore, she receives 3rd degree burns all over her legs.
Correction: Brosnan's hand is in contact with the water for just a few seconds, and he does react in pain. Grandma is standing up to her waist in the lake for a considerable amount of time, and as the acid soaks into the absorbent cloth of her trousers it will continue to eat away at her skin even after she is dragged ashore.
Corrected entry: When Harry notices that the water in town is full of sulphur dioxide it's late in the evening, yet when they start calling for people to meet, it's daytime - why would they wait for so long (till 6 p.m. of next day) if the volcano was about to erupt?
Correction: Because obviously the measurements and information they had during the night led them to believe there was still some time. Harry, for example, who has been the most vocal about getting the town on alert, is relatively calm during the meeting, so it is evident that things aren't panic-worthy yet. Attempting to evacuate the town during the dead of night would be difficult and they would not be able to be sure everyone knew about it. Waiting until the next day would allow them to put an evacuation plan into effect and get everyone out safely.
Corrected entry: Harry says that the water supply has been contaminated but when he is at the Town Meeting trying to tell everyone about the evacuation plan there is a pitcher of fresh water on his table.
Correction: The water may not necessarily be tap water. Chances are it was bottled water poured into a pitcher.
Corrected entry: After the pyroclastic explosion Rachel, Harry and the kids get into the mine. There are a lot of things from Rachel's son in there: Sodas, chips, tapes and a tape player/recorder among them. There is a shot in which we can see a pile of tapes on the player, in almost perfect order. But if we consider that the whole town collapsed because of the earthquake occurred before the eruption, then those tapes must have fallen down, surely?
Correction: Or maybe they picked up the things and we just didn't see them do it.
Corrected entry: When Harry and Rachel go to get her kids they cross the bridge and all the cars are going the same way - to get out of town. When they find out that the kids went to get Grandma, they go back through the water, since the bridge is packed. A few cars follow their example and try to cross the river - why are these cars going back to the town rather than away from it?
Correction: The cars are not coming from the same direction that Harry took. They saw Harry drive down the bank on the "out-of-town" side, heading back towards town, and thought they could make it across the river FROM the "in-town" side, heading away from town.
Correction: How is that possibly a film mistake? It was her choice in the movie and obviously a stupid one.