In short, LA burns. Trees explode, windows blow out, museums pack up their Hieronymous Bosch collections and head for the hills. That's a very clever in joke, folks. If you don't know Bosch, take an art class. Lave in the subway tunnels below.
Men melt in their boots, literally melt, in one of the neatest effects of the flick.
Forces mobilize in impossible time and yadda yadda yadda. Lava is one of those forces of nature that just doesn't go away for a while, like hurricanes or tornadoes or storms. It comes and keeps coming until it stops. So the effort to fire up little human stories inside the big battle is a valiant one, and Jones is one of the few actors who can pull it off. As we work our way through the summer, I expect to start hearing people tearing apart movies like Volcano for improbabilities in the plot and story telling.