Milan: Sicily’s Mount Etna has put on a fiery show, sending a cloud of smoke and ash several kilometres into the air, but officials said the activity posed no danger to the population.
The level of alert due to the volcanic activity was raised at the Catania airport, but no immediate interruptions were reported. An official update on Monday (Tuesday AEST) declared the ash cloud emission had ended by the afternoon.
Italy’s INGV National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology said the spectacle on Europe’s most active volcano was caused when part of the south-east crater collapsed, resulting in hot lava flows. It was the 14th eruptive phase in recent months.
The area of danger was confined to the summit of Etna, which was closed to tourists as a precaution, according to Stefano Branca, an INGV official in Catania.
Sicily’s President, Renato Schifani, said lava flows emitted in the eruption had not passed the natural containment area “and posed no danger to the population”.
The event was captured on video and in photos that went viral on social media. Tremors from the eruption were widely felt in the towns and villages on Mount Etna’s flanks, Italian media reported.
Video showed tourists running along a path on the flank of the vast volcano with smoke billowing some distance in the background. Excursions are popular on Etna, which is some 3300 metres high, with a surface area of some 1200 square kilometres.
One student, from Trinity College in Dublin, told Irish broadcaster RTE News that her group had just arrived when the volcano erupted, London’s Telegraph reported, prompting their tour guides to yell at them to get back in the minibus.
“The tour guides and bus drivers ran in panic towards the buses and shouted at everyone to get to the buses fast,” the student, Marina, said.
“There were about five buses honking their horns in urgency. We waited for everyone to get on for around 10 minutes. People were taking pictures and there was no clear protocol to get everyone on board,” she said, which caused panic among those already on the bus, who yelled at the drivers to leave.
“People were coughing, some covered their noses and mouths. The atmosphere was confusion, fear and anxiety.”
AP
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