Homes evacuated in Italy after strongest quake in 40 years near supervolcano
Homes were evacuated and many people slept in their cars or on the street after the strongest earthquake in 40 years shook the area around the sprawling Campi Flegrei supervolcano close to Naples, The Guardian reports.
The 4.4-magnitude tremor in Pozzuoli, a densely populated port city, was followed by 150 quakes that were also strongly felt in Naples.
Local media reports said cracks had formed in buildings and chunks of masonry had collapsed. Schools were closed on Tuesday in Pozzuoli and a cluster of towns and districts of Naples.
Seismic activity on Campi Flegrei, which is home to at least 360,000 people across seven of the most at-risk inhabited hubs, has intensified in the past two years, with the frequency and strength of the quakes increasing as the caldera, the basin at the top of the volcano, weakens and pressure beneath it builds. This causes the ground to rise and the volcano’s crust to stretch.
“The earth is continuing to rise at a rate of 2cm a month, a higher rate than last year, and unfortunately it seems to be continuing at this rate,” Mauro Di Vito, the director of the Vesuvius Observatory for Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), told reporters. “We expect similar earthquakes … I cannot make predictions but we can expect the swarm to continue.”
The Italian government has devised a mass evacuation plan, with test-runs expected at the end of May.
The 7-mile Campi Flegrei caldera is a much larger volcano than the nearby, cone-shaped Vesuvius, which destroyed the ancient Roman city of Pompeii in AD79, and is much more active.
