Italy’s Etna volcano alert raised due to increased activity

Italy has raised the alert for Mount Etna, the most active volcano in Europe, on the southern island of Sicily, due to lava emissions and tremors and the risk that it could quickly enter into “more vigorous activity,” although for now it remains between low and medium, Civil Protection reported.

The department “ordered the transition of the alert level from green to yellow” and urged its teams in Sicily to take “risk-reduction measures, especially in relation to the presence of hikers at high altitude,” it said in a statement.

The decision was taken last night, following “an increase in tremors and frequent Strombolian activity up to the summit craters, accompanied by small lava emissions in the crater area” of the volcano, which could lead to “a rapid evolution of the phenomenon towards more energetic activity,” added Civil Protection.

The yellow alert level implies low to medium eruptive activity, which is higher than the green level, which implies no or very low eruptive activity. All of this is determined by the monitoring of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, which constantly analyses the existing danger assessments through the Etna Observatory.

Civil Protection warns that on Etna “a situation of greater imbalance persists” that “is independent of volcanic phenomena at a local level, with frequent variations” in Sicily.

“The island’s population is asked to stay informed and scrupulously follow the instructions of local authorities,” the source said.

The intensification of activity on Etna is added to that of the Stromboli volcano, located on an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, in southern Italy, which yesterday registered a cloud of ash with explosions and the expulsion of magma, although without posing a danger to the two towns on its slopes.

Stromboli, which gives its name to a type of highly explosive eruption, is located in the Aeolian Islands archipelago, off Sicily, and is often the site of these eruptions, which have become another tourist attraction on the island.

For its part, the eruptive episodes of Etna are typical of its activity and cover the surrounding towns with ashes.

Hundreds of such tremors have occurred since 1977, including an exceptional sequence of 66 tremors between January and August 2000, and around 50 between 2011 and 2013.