He's gonna blow!!
Posted on 03/07/2006 11:10:23 AM PST by blam
Think Pompeii got hit hard? Worse eruptions lurk
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
Mon Mar 6, 5:03 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The preserved footprints and abandoned homes of villagers who fled a giant eruption of Mount Vesuvius 3,800 years ago show the volcano could destroy modern-day Naples with little warning, Italian and U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
The eruption buried entire villages as far as 15 miles (25 kilometres) from the volcano, cooking people as they tried to escape and dumping several feet (metres) of ash and mud.
New excavations show far more extensive damage than that found at the more famous site of Pompeii, buried in A.D. 79.
It could happen again, affecting metropolitan Naples, where 3 million people live, and officials are not planning properly for it, the researchers write in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Evidence shows that a sudden, en masse evacuation of thousands of people occurred at the beginning of the eruption," Giuseppe Mastrolorenzo and colleagues at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Volcanologia-Osservatorio Vesuviano wrote.
"Everything was there," added Michael Sheridan, a geologist and hazard assessment expert at the University at Buffalo in New York who worked on the study.
"They even left animals in cages," Sheridan said in a telephone interview.
"Scenes of everyday life, frozen by the volcanic deposits, testify that people suddenly left the village: the molds of four huts, with pottery and other objects left inside; skeletons of a dog and nine pregnant goat victims found in a cage; and footprints of adults, children and cows filled by the first fallout pumice," the researchers wrote.
"I think what they probably had was a couple of days (to get out). There are lots of skeletons but thousands and thousands of footprints," Sheridan said.
The footprints would have been left as survivors ran through the mud deposited in the explosion. Ash filled them, preserving them for archeologists
to find.
VIGNETTES OF LIFE
The site at Pompeii is famous for the vignettes of everyday life preserved in the ash -- writhing victims, everyday households and even a brothel with lurid murals.
Several sites dug up in farmland and pumice quarries in the surrounding area show similar preservation of the much-older Bronze Age civilization, Sheridan said. "This is really a slice into the life of the people who lived there," he said.
Vesuvius would have shaken as the strength of the eruption built. A column of ash would have spewed high up into the atmosphere and then rained down for many miles around.
Clouds of steam and ash would have formed on the flanks of the volcano and rolled down, leaving steaming deposits as far away as 9 miles.
These would have cooled toward the edges, allowing escape, but closer in, nothing would have survived, Sheridan said. "The people in there would have cooked," he said.
Looking at Vesuvius now, it sits directly across the Bay of Naples from the city and its extensive suburbs.
"If you look at the structure of the volcano, it now forms an amphitheater that is facing west (toward Naples). This has a very strong effect on blast and flows," Sheridan said.
"It is almost as if they would be focused toward Naples."
Sheridan said the disaster that followed Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on the U.S. Gulf Coast shows officials do not plan adequately for natural disasters.
"It is obvious they were not paying attention to what happened or have plans for something a little larger than what they expected," he said.
"In Naples it is the same sort of story."
Mexico City's nearest volcanoes are 30 or 40 miles away. I climbed almost to the top of Popocatepetl. If the wind was blowing the wrong way it could certainly cause serious problems.
With that major eruption about 1800 BCE, perhaps that was the cause of the Second Intermediate Period in Egypt when there was famine, chaos, and the Hyksos invaded.
There were several really large caldera events prior to the end of the ice age about 18,000 years ago. One, Sakura-jima in Japan left a 15 mile diameter crater about 22 Kya.
"Not me. I'm planning on living forever. So far it's working."
And "die trying" is for losers! ;)
Do it. You gotta love the seedy feeling you get in Napoli. And if you're a history buff, the National Museum is a must. They've got lots of frecoes from Pompeii and Ercolano. But probably the best thing about Napoli is that it's about an hour and a half drive to Sorrento with Vesuvio smack dab in the middle. Now, you wouldn't want to miss Sorrento since it happens to be the most beautiful place on the planet. Also a trip to Pompeii is good, but visiting Vesuvio himself at the rim of the caldera is much better.
Did you get a chance to see Ercolano (Herculaneum)?
Naples is very crime-ridden now; not a good place to visit. If a volcano has to erupt, it's as good as place as any.
I've been to Pompeii and it's a very interesting place to visit.
I drove up to Sorrento from Paestum this summer. What a great dive. The Misses and I fantasize about ending up in Sorrento.
Isn't the coast road crazy? It was white-knuckle city for me the whole way the first time I had to drive it, but after about the sixth or seventh time I was flashing my lights and honking my horn at the newbies just like a native!Doesn't get any prettier, though highway 1 around Big Sur comes close.
And therein lies the answer for longevity. If you live to 150 years old and asked what is the secret for your long life, there is a simple two word answer: NOT DIEING!!!
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