Volcano rocked by quakes

Rocked by two earthquakes five minutes apart, frightened people today raced out of their homes on Mount Etna’s slopes, where a thick river of lava was threatening a refuge for hikers.

“The shaking was violent, the walls shook for what seemed like an infinitely long time,” Enrico Pappalardo, mayor of Santa Venerina, one of Etna’s towns, told the Italian news agency ANSA.

No one was injured and no buildings were damaged in the back-to-back quakes on the volcano in eastern Sicily, the mayor said.

The first quake had a magnitude of 2.7. It was followed by a tremor with a 3.7 magnitude, said the National Institute of Geophysics.

Just after noon, yet another quake shook the mountain. It had a magnitude of 3.0, the institute said.

Soldiers working with bulldozers and trucks laden with dirt were constructing a protective earthen wall around a refuge which serves hikers and tourists as a river of lava advanced toward the building.

Another Etna town mayor, Salvatore Moschetto from Nicolosi, which is near the refuge, said he was worried about the jobs in the tourist sector which could be lost if the lava destroyed the structure.

Etna, Europe’s most active volcano, burst into activity on October 27 with rivers of lava pouring down the mountain, which is near Catania, and columns of thick ash and smoke as much as one mile high forced the closure of that city’s airport for days.

But in the last couple of weeks, the ash cloud lessened and the airport resumed activity.