“Thursday 22nd, about ten on the clock in the morning, the thundering noise began again; the oldest men declared, they never heard the like; and, indeed, it was very alarming: we were in expectation every morning of some dire calamity.”[1] It is not the Doomsday – it is the Vesuvius, the Neapolitan volcano, erupting in 1794 and described by the then English ambassador. The Vesuvius is still active, thought sleeping since the last eruption in 1944[2], and everybody knows it, in Neaples: something similar will happen again.
The good news is, it is the best monitored volcano in the world. The bad news? More than 600,000 people live on its mountainside and should be able to leave in less than a week if the red alarm is given.
People are not really worried, also because Naples is used to Vesuvius eruptions. The most famous, which in 79 AD destroyed the Roman town of Pompei, was reported by Pliny the Younger. Gas, stones and ashes formed a column from the Vesuvius, like “a pine tree. It rosed into the sky on a very long trunk [more than 10,000 meter] from which spread some branches.” Still today, similar eruptions are defined as plinian.
It will always be like that. “It is like a bottle of Champagne.” says Giovanni Macedonio, director of the Vesuvius Observatory. “The pressure of the magma [molten rock material under the earth's crust] increases continuously, but the big cork – the mountain itself – prevent the magma to get out. At a certain point the pressure is so high that breaks the cork. The magma pour out, destroying and lighting the cork. Then more magma comes out, and the cork becomes lighter and so on, until when a huge geyser explodes.” With the power of hundreds of Hiroshima bombs, a plinian eruption is not something you want to observe too close.
Albeit in the last 2000 years the Neapolitans observed 25 plinian eruptions, and each one destroyed some villages, it seems nobody ever considered the option to leave the Vesuvius’ region: today, population density in Naples is the double than in London.
Naples would not be Naples without the Vesuvius. The volcano is not just a landmark. Other symbols of the town, like pizza, spaghetti, music did not actually shape the character of the people. They are products of the Neapolitan character. On the contrary, the constant threat of the Vesuvius forced the town to build a unique weltanschauung: a fatalism combined with a deep love for life (and related pleasures).
Fatalism…
The Vesuvius could be violent enough to destroy some towns in the range of some tens of kilometres. Nevertheless, most people do not care – some people think a disaster would be impossible: the patron saint, Januarius, would not allow it, they say. The (allegedly original and 1700 year old) blood of the saint, normally on solid status, liquefies twice a year, proving that miracles are possible. Still today, thousands of people assist to the event and are then tranquillised by the power of the spiritual world. More than once, a statue of the saint was used to stop the lava (an originally Neapolitan word indicating the magma coming out from a volcano), included in the last eruption in 1944. But fatalism is not just for religious people: even the most materialist Neapolitan person does not really care about the Vesuvius. People got used to it: “It erupts since more than 20,000 years…” says Mr Macedonio.
… and love for life.
Every cloud has a silver lining. “The Vesuvius, – says Gennaro di Paola, 85, a former mayor of Monte Somma, a village partially destroyed in 1944 – gives a very fertile terrain. Great wine, basil, tomato, olives.” Eat a pizza and drink a Greco di Tufo wine and you’ll understand what he means. “The lava, once cooled down, is easy to process. Most of the streets and the buildings in the region are made out of lavic stone.” The wonderful renaissance buildings of Naples are made out of tufo, an elastic but robust volcanic stone resistant to earthquake (yes, Naples is in a seismic region too).
Naples is not known for its efficiency. It is chaotic, dirty, without any respect for any rule. Though, tried to get the best out of the Vesuvius. One example is the observatory. It is the first of its kind, created in 1841 (the second one, at the Hawaii, appeared in 1912). Mr Macedonio, a nuclear physicist converted to volcanology, monitors the Vesuvius together with 40 other scientists 24 hours a day. The shape of the mountain, the temperature, the composition of emitted gas. And, of course, its rumbling. In a room filled with 30 LCD screens, connected to a computer-cluster, each one of the 200 earthquakes produced per year by the Vesuvius is immediately analysed. “The hard job – explains Mr Macedonio – is to cut the noise from the signal. We are sensitive to an earthquake in Chile as to a goal made by a local football team.”
The observatory is responsible for setting the level of alarm – from “no danger” to “immediate evacuation”. Albeit the observatory uses the most advanced technology, people living in one of the 18 towns of the “red zone” (that means on the Vesuvius) sometimes need to be reassured. Whenever an earthquake is perceived by the population (about five times a year), the telephone lines of the observatory are overloaded by local calls.
“The Vesuvius, unfortunately, is like a dormitory. Land is much cheaper there than in other places and houses are built without any authorization. People live there, but work far from it.” The former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was only the last politician who declared an official pardon – under payment of an ad hoc tax – for illegal buildings. “Some buildings were not included in the pardon, and thanks to the ‘Vesuvius Park Association’ were denounced and destroyed [only some units per year],” says Mr Macedonio. “It would be much better if the Vesuvius were a working place, with hotel, bed-and-breakfast, but that’s what we have…”
Indeed, someone was able to use the Vesuvius even more than as a working place. Lello Esposito, a known Neapolitan artist, uses the volcano as model, muse, collaborator and exhibition place. He presented his new exibition “Volcano in New York” just six months ago. Mr Esposito is a Neapolitan artists obsessed by the three icons of his town – the patron, saint Januarius; the classical puppetry character Pulcinella; and the Vesuvius. In a recent work he created a mask of Pulcinella out of lava. The sculpture, more than three meter high, is now installed on the road to the top of the Vesuvius. Hundreds of bronze Vesuvius came out of his laboratory. Vesuvius used as container of spaghetti, Vesuvius erupting skulls, eggs or rats. “The eruption is a magnificent spectacle. Just like we [Neapolitan people] do with emotions, the Vesuvius explodes ejecting lava. The Vesuvius is part of Naples, it is like Naples, with its apparent inactivity. It is a source of stimuli, not only for an artist. And it is the guard of the gulf.”
“The Vesuvius built the dark side of the Neapolitan character too,” he says. “The idea that the intervention should come from ‘up there’. Its inactivity is the like our traditions, apparently static.” And just like the Neapolitan traditions, the Vesuvius actually does change. The last time in 1944, under the eyes of the US Army, which just occupied the town. “It has changed a lot” says Mr di Paola. “Until the eruption, smoke continuously came out of the crater. Red-hot lava was a touristic attraction, and there was a cable-railway to get on the top. It was a must to stay until dawn at the border of the crater to watch the sun raising and lighting up the gulf. Even if no one I knew could afford the railway at that time… and we all went on foot.”
Nowadays the Vesuvius is overcrowded by students and tourists. In a typical example of “the art of getting by” an old couple rents sticks at the beginning of the walk (no railway, and cars have to stop hundred meters under the top). An old Fiat Panda is used to transport old and impaired people on the trail. On the top are two shops with souvenirs. The crater is a two kilometre wide hole – nothing more than a hole. The stone is cold, and only in one point there is little smoke coming out.
Down, you can spot Ercolano and Pompei, destroyed almost 2,000 years ago. Plus 18 modern towns, some of which could be destroyed in the next eruption. But nobody really seems to believe the Vesuvius could do that to its people.
[1] Observations on Mount Vesuvius, Mount Etna, and Other Volcanoes: In a Series of Letters, Addressed to the Royal Society. From the Honourable Sir William Hamilton. London, printed for T. Cadel, in the strand, 1774. Pdf available for free on books.google.com
[2] The video is on video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2967325087271207931
