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Vesuvius Threatens 300,000 Lives

John Follain

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d die if an evacuation could not be completed in time, the research says.

The findings are from a study by some of Europe's leading vulcanologists and public health experts, including Peter Baxter of Cambridge University.

Dr Baxter - known in the field as "Dr Doom" for his studies of the victims of eruptions - and a team of Italian scientists estimated the death toll based on the impact of the final phase of an eruption, when a mushroom-shaped cloud of superheated gas, rock and ash would come crashing to earth.

"The main cause of death would be the high temperatures - the flows would penetrate windows, burn people to death and asphyxiate them," Dr Baxter said.

Vesuvius, which was known as "hell's chimney-pot" in the Middle Ages, has not erupted since 1944. Over the past 2000 years, it has erupted on average once a century.

"The rule is that the longer the period of inactivity, the bigger the eruption," said Augusto Neri, of the National Geophysical and Vulcanology Institute, who led the study. The most famous eruption of Vesuvius, in the first century, still grips the imagination 2000 years later. More than 16,000 people died in Pompeii, Herculaneum and the surrounding area when they were covered in a 10m layer of volcanic ash, or engulfed by billions of tons of pumice and other rock.

Pliny the Younger, who witnessed it from across the bay, wrote of the eruption: "Darkness fell - not the dark of a moonless or cloudy night but as if the lamp had been put out in a closed room."

About 2.5 million tourists visited Pompeii last year, where the finest ruined villas boast their original frescoes and where the paved roads are still marked by ruts left by ancient wheels. The plaster casts of victims burnt to death during the eruption and the traces of their bodies found in the ash in the fetal position are among the main attractions.

According to the new study, Pompeii would also be among the sites hit by any future eruption, with tourists among the victims if they were not moved out of the area in time.

The report, published last week in the American journal Geophysical Research Letters, is the first computer study with a three-dimensional simulation of an eruption's impact on densely populated areas.

The first rumbling of Vesuvius would be followed by the spewing of vast amounts of ash that would blot out the sun as it rained down, the scientists say. The ash would make it difficult to breathe, crush many roofs and make road travel impossible.

The Italian authorities say that since Vesuvius is among the most closely monitored volcanoes in the world, there would be sufficient warning to organise an emergency evacuation before any danger materialised. The civil protection ministry estimates this would take three to five days. But officials have long warned that news of an imminent eruption would cause panic with thousands fleeing, mostly by car, quickly paralysing roads. One ministry report stated: "In this phase many deaths are to be expected, caused by road accidents, people being crushed, fires, heart attacks and shootings."

According to the study, the final phase of the eruption would see a column of gas, rock and ash, similar to a nuclear weapon's mushroom cloud, come crashing down on to the lower slopes of the volcano.

Photo: esuvius is the only active volcano on the mainland of Europe. It is probably the most famous volcano in the world. It rises on the Bay of Naples, about 7 miles southeast of the city of Naples, Italy. Scientists have studied Vesuvius more than any other volcano because it erupts frequently and is easy to reach. Vesuvius is a cone within the rim of Mount Somma, a big crater formed when the top of the mountain collapsed in the eruption of AD 79. The height of the cone changes with each eruption. In 1900, it was 4,275 feet high. But after several eruptions since then, its height has dropped to 4,190 feet. The top of the cone is a cup-shaped crater, ranging from 50 to 400 feet across. Vesuvius spouts columns of steam, cinders, and sometimes small amounts of lava into the air.

Many people live on the lower slopes of the mountain and on the plains at its foot, in spite of Vesuvius' history of eruptions. The volcanic soil is extremely fertile and the area is famous for its vineyards of wine grapes.

The greatest destruction in recent years occurred in April 1906 (pictured), when several towns were destroyed. In the eruption of March 1944, which destroyed the village of San Sebastiano, soldiers of the Allied armies helped the people of nearby towns escape the lava and volcanic dust. Before the eruption of 1944, thousands of visitors came to Vesuvius every year. They could go down into the crater for some distance and see a crimson stream of lava flow from the cone and turn into a bed of cold stone. A cable railway that took visitors to within 450 feet of the edge of the crater was destroyed in this eruption. Many people still visit the area.

The result would be pyroclastic blasts of red-hot gas and rock, followed by thousands of tons more ash. The temperature of magma leaving the crater would be 950C, falling to about 200C at the outer limit of the red zone.

Travelling at 100km/h, these flows would sweep over thousands of homes built illegally on the slopes of Vesuvius since World War II to reach towns including Ottaviano, which contains a Medici palace, and on to Sophia Loren's home town of Portici. The flows would arrive in Pompeii and Herculaneum within 20 minutes.

Experts are divided on how much warning they will have of an eruption.

Giuseppe Luongo of the University of Naples, a former director of the Vesuvius Observatory, which monitors the volcano, believes evacuation plans are inadequate and local people are ill-informed about them.

"Today people aren't prepared for an evacuation," Professor Luongo said. "It's wrong to bet on carrying out the entire evacuation in just three to five days. If there was an eruption tomorrow it's quite possible we'd see huge traffic jams, car crashes and people using guns to make their escape. We need a plan to start the evacuation of vulnerable people, like pensioners, first.

"People need to know what to do and they have to understand they won't be able to get out by car. You can walk 10 miles in three hours, that's quite a good safety margin."

Anyone who doubts the apocalyptic vision of the scientists has only torefer back to Pliny's description tobe reminded of the reality: "You could hear the shrieks of women, thewailing of infants, the shouts ofmen."