The aim is to thin out the
number of people living in the dangerous "red zone," thus reducing the time
for what would be one of the biggest peace-time evacuations, if Vesuvius exploded.
At present, more than 500,000 people live in the zone, an area
comprising 18 villages squashed within a four-mile radius between the
volcano and the sea.
The only active volcano on European mainland, Vesuvius has erupted about
three dozen times since 79 A.D., when it buried Pompeii and the nearby
towns of Herculaneum and Stabiae.
The volcano hasn't blown its top since 1944. At that time, lava destroyed
some orchards and homes and 26 people were killed.
Even though there is no warning sign of an imminent eruption, the effort
of regional authorities to lure people out of the danger zone indicates
that the threat is not underestimated.
"The next eruption could occur within some decades or some hundreds of years.
Most likely, it will be an explosive one," the Vesuvian Observatory said
in a statement.
When Will It Blow?
According to vulcanologists' reports at the latest World Geological
Conference in Florence, the next event will probably resemble the 1631
eruption.
The lava flow from that eruption killed about 3,000 people, making it the worst
since 79 A.D.
With such an explosive eruption, people living in an area of 15 kilometers (nine miles)
from the volcano will have little hope of survival, according to the first
physically based hazard estimates from pyroclastic flows in the
Vesuvian area.
"Our simulations show that pyroclastic currents similar to those produced
in the 79 A.D. eruption can reach even larger distances. Not to mention the
thermal effects," Giuseppe Mastrolorenzo, who led the
study with Sergio Rossano of the Osservatorio Vesuviano and colleagues
from Naples University, told Discovery News.
"We established that the temperature in Herculaneum, which
is about seven kilometers (four miles) from the volcano, was above 500° Celsius. The temperature
remains high even at bigger distance," he said.
Under such conditions, lahars — volcanic mudflows — will follow, reaching
an area of more than 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) from the volcano, Mastrolorenzo said.
In this catastrophic scenario, the pool of possible Vesuvius victims will
increase because of the panic.
"Our only choice is to reduce the number of people living in the danger
zone. The region's new cash offer contains new rules to make it possible
for all those who did not have the requirements under the previous
regulation to obtain the incentives," said Marco Di Lello, urban planning
counsellor for the Campania Region.
He added that 3,276 families applied under the previous scheme. The
hope is that within 10 years about 150,000 people will be lured by the
incentives and move out.
Monitoring the gases emitted by lava and their isotope content could be a
useful tool for predicting what kind of an eruption there will be, according to a recent
study by Jon Blundy from the Earth Sciences Department at Bristol
University in England.
In his research, Blundy demonstrated that rocks that erupted in 1980 from
Mount St. Helens, in Washington, preserve a remarkable record of the
goings-on beneath the volcano in the period prior to its eruption.
Blundy and his team showed that the magma that erupted explosively at that
time came largely from two reservoirs — a deep one and a shallow one — while
subsequent, more gentle eruptions came exclusively from magma trapped at
shallow levels.
"We have shown that there is a link between the storage depth of magma and
the explosiveness of an eruption. I think this monitoring can be also
applied to Vesuvius. If it is coupled with more traditional techniques,
then I think that there is great potential," Blundy said.
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