Mount Etna eruption warning as volcano spews out rocks the size of cars

Mount Etna has roared back into action after a few months of inactivity, sending up a 7.5-mile high volcanic ash cloud over eastern Sicily.

The lava flow from Etna, one of Europe’s most active volcanoes, was centred around the crater on the mountain’s south-east slope, said officials in Italy.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or property damage on the inhabited towns on the slopes of the volcano, which is popular with hikers, skiers and other tourists.

By Monday afternoon, the lava flow from the crater had stopped, officials said. But earlier in the day, while the volcanic cloud was pouring out of Etna, they issued a warning for aircraft in the area.

The towering cloud, visible for miles, was the latest impressive show of Etna’s power this month.

Catania airport was closed and ash covered the local area, the volcano is thought to have spewed out two million cubic metres of lava, gas and debris.

Earlier in February, a particularly powerful eruption sent bolts of lightning dramatically across the sky over eastern Sicily.

Mount Etna
ANTONIO PARRINELLO

Boris Behncke, a from Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, told The Times: “This was the 54th episode since February 2021 and we think the volcano has released well over 100 million cubic metres of material since then,”

“We’ve been lucky a new opening has not appeared lower down on Etna’s flanks, from where lava could have reached inhabited areas — as happened in the Canaries recently."

Reacting to Monday's eruption, he said: “We could see enormous rocks as large as SUVs crashing down close to the crater.”

Etna has had scores of known eruptions in its history. In 1669, in what has been considered the volcano’s worst-known eruption, lava buried a swathe of Catania, the largest city in the east on the island of Sicily, and devastated dozens of villages.

More recently, in 1983, dynamite was used to divert lava threatening towns.

In 1992, the army built an earthen wall to contain the lava, flowing from Etna for months, so it would not reach one of the villages on the slopes.