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![]() Sunday, January 11, 1998 Published at 15:17 GMT ![]() ![]() ![]() World ![]() Mount Etna 'ready to erupt again' ![]() Experts fear that Mount Etna is about to erupt
Italy's leading volcano expert says that a series of more than 100 small earthquakes around Sicily's Mount Etna in less than two days
could be a prelude to its first significant eruption in six
years.
Franco Barberi, undersecretary at the civil protection
department in Rome, said that the number of earthquakes and the
amount of volcanic activity around Etna, Europe's tallest and
most active volcano, was increasing.
Instruments have registered some 130 earthquakes in the area
in the last two days, including one which reached 3.8 on the
Richter scale and rocked eastern Sicily on Saturday morning.
That quake was felt along most of the coast.
"The craters of the volcano have been in activity in the
past months and the pressure caused by this seismic activity
might be released," Barberi told Italian radio.
Barberi said a "proper eruption" would follow if a big
fissure opened at the top of the volcano or on one of its lower
slopes.
Barberi said the higher the altitude of the eventual
eruption, the less likely it was to threaten villages on the
lower slopes of the 10,900 feet (3,300 metre) volcano.
Etna's last significant eruption was in 1992 when two
streams of lava threatened the village of Zafferana. Italian and US military diverted the lava flow away from the village with
spectacular man-made explosions on the volcano's slopes until
the eruption subsided.
The civil protection department in Rome said its staff and
volunteers in the Etna area had been put on alert in case an
eruption made it necessary to evacuate villagers.
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