Living under a volcano

Malcolm Billings
BBC correspondent, Naples

An impressive background to the modern city of Naples, Mount Vesuvius looks harmless enough.

The last eruption was in 1944

It is six decades since its last eruption, and there is little sign of volcanic activity today, so why are the authorities offering people money to flee their homes?

Filippo Alaia was only 10 at the time of the last eruption.

"I remember it very well,'' he told me in the old people's centre in San Sebastiano al Vesuvio, one of 18 towns on the slopes of the volcano absorbed by the suburbs of Naples.

Filippo remembered that he followed the lava flow through the town and roasted chestnuts on it. ''The older boys", he said, "lit their cigarettes on the pools of lava."

That was in 1944. ''The war was still going on", he recalled. ''American troops helped people to move from the path of the lava and gave us a ride on their trucks piled high with all our things.''

You would have to be nailed to the floor to be killed by lava, it moves so slowly Professor Bill Maguire, London University

That eruption was the last in modern times that anyone can remember.

The town was burnt and crushed by the slow moving river of molten rock.

According to Professor Bill Maguire of London University, who studied the mountain, a lava flow is not usually a danger to life. As he put it: ''You would have to be nailed to the floor to be killed by lava, it moves so slowly.''

Time bomb

About 600,000 people have chosen to live on the flanks of Vesuvius and to ignore the lessons of 1944, not to mention Pompeii, AD79.

They have built right up to the end of the tree line where the crater rises steeply to the craggy rim, some 4,000ft (1,220m), above sea level.

Wonderful vines and tomatoes grow in the volcanic soil, the air is cleaner than in Naples and the views are spectacular.

The people of Pompeii were killed instantly in a poisonous, burning wind, blowing at over 200mph

The down side is that they are all living on a massive time bomb.

Vulcanologists say, that on past form, another eruption is overdue.

Ever since 1631, when Vesuvius was almost as fierce as it was in AD79, there have been regular eruptions like the one in 1944.

But there has not been a hint that the volcano is still alive, except for some wisps of steam that blow about inside the crater that is hundreds of feet deep.

The old observatory on the side of the mountain is now a museum. The scientists have a new, hi-tech, laboratory in Naples where they monitor the temperature inside the crater and record every tiny movement.

Out in the countryside, they have put sensors in deep wells to check the level of the water. If the wells dry up, the way they did in 1631, they know that the earth beneath is beginning to fracture and that an eruption might be on the way.

They expect to get about two weeks notice if the eruption follows the 1631 pattern.

Incentives

To encourage people to move, the regional government is offering families about 30,000 euros (£22,000), to leave their houses and re-locate out of the danger zone.

About 2,500 have applied so far.

There will also be a fund of 10 million euros available to people who want to convert their houses into small tourist hotels. The theory is that tourists will be able to pack up and leave at a moment's notice.

At some point of course the army and the police would arrive to clear everyone out.

The distrust of everyone and everything official is widespread. Vulcanologist Dr Carmen Solana, who is studying the evacuation plan, has found that many people would not leave for fear of looting.

To complicate matters, this scepticism is reinforced by scientists at the Naples University.

Professor Giuseppe Rolandi, who actually lives on the slopes of the volcano in San Sebastiano, says that the mountain shows no signs of erupting, that it may have reached the end of a cycle and is now due for more than 100 years of inactivity.

Uncertainty

Other experts say they just cannot tell when it may explode again, or how big the eruption is likely to be.

Scientists have however found out much more about past eruptions.

Body casts of Pompeii volcano victims lay on the ground

Pompeii and the smaller town of Herculaneum are still being excavated in an attempt to discover what happened to the people almost 2,000 years ago when both towns were wiped out.

Recently-discovered skeletons that have been analysed scientifically have provided frightening evidence of how they died.

Professor Andrew Wallace Hadrill, who is directing a special conservation project at Herculaneum led me to the port area of Herculaneum where the remains of bodies were found.

These are people who on the 25 August, AD79, were waiting to get away on boats as the volcano, just four or five miles away, was exploding and pushing a column of ash and gas 20 miles up into the stratosphere.

They were carrying what they could - jewellery, gold and silver coins, keys, a leather sack of tools.

At about midnight, a hurricane of gas and ash whooshed down the sides of the mountain. The heat was incredible, about 500C.

Standing on the ancient quayside, where the refugees had tried to shelter, Wallace Hadrill explained: "They died instantaneously. Their flesh stripped off their bones while the intense heat boiled their brains.''

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From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 13 March, 2004 at 1130 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.