A massive eruption at Mt Etna forced tourists to flee the volcano on Monday after a plume of high temperature gases, ash and rock “several kilometres high” billowed into the air above them, Italian authorities said.
Footage posted on social media shows long lines of people hurrying downhill away from the explosion while the owner of one tour company told CNN they had 40 people on the volcano when it erupted.
The volcano on the Italian island of Sicily is a popular tourist destination visited by 1.5 million people a year, many of whom trek almost all the way to its summit.
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Although Mt Etna is one of the world’s most active volcanoes, there hasn’t been an eruption of this magnitude since 2014, according to the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology Observatory.
Explosions are still increasing in intensity and the mountain is spewing out a very small amount of lava and fire, the observatory added.
This eruption, which began overnight, produced explosions heard as far away as Taormina and Catania, which are about 50km and 40km away, respectively, according to several witnesses who posted footage on social media.
The observatory said that the preliminary observations show a “partial collapse” of the northern flank of the volcano’s southeast crater, which has produced spectacular lava flows during recent eruptions in the last few months.
The Sicilian Civil Protection agency issued a Volcanic Observatory Notice for Aviation (VONA), which means all flight travel must avoid the area. The airports in Catania and Palermo remain open as, currently, the wind is not blowing ash in the direction of the airport. However, some flights from Catania have been diverted to Palermo, according to Flight Radar Data.
Around 1pm local time (9pm AEST), the volcano started spewing hot lava, which is more in line with previous eruptions, an observatory spokesman said.
The observatory defined the volcanic activity as a pyroclastic eruption, resulting in a “significant increase in volcanic tremor and the formation of an eruptive column containing a lethal mixture of high-temperature gases, lava grains, volcanic ash, and rock fragments of various sizes that rapidly descends down the slopes of the volcano.”
