Historical disasters

3.2. Italy

Italy is a volcanically active country, due to the presence of the boundary between the Eurasian Plate and the African Plate

The main history eruptions:

The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD was one of the most catastrophic volcanic eruptions in European history. Historians have learned about the eruption from the eyewitness account of Pliny the Younger, a Roman administrator and poet.

Mount Vesuvius spewed a deadly cloud of volcanic gas, stones, and ash to a height of 33 kilometres ejecting molten rock and pulverized pumice at the rate of 1.5 million tons per second.

The eruption completely destroyed Pompeii, Herculaneum, Stabiae and Oplontis.

By 2003 around 1,044 casts made from impressions of bodies in the ash deposits had been recovered in and around Pompeii, with the scattered bones of another 100. The remains of about 332 bodies have been found at Herculaneum (300 in arched vaults discovered in 1980). What percentage these numbers are of the total dead or the percentage of the dead to the total number at risk remain completely unknown.

Pompeii and its inhabitants were well-preserved for almost two thousand years. The lack of air and moisture let objects remain underground with little to no deterioration. Once excavated, the site provided a wealth of source material and evidence for analysis, giving detail into the lives of the Pompeiians. However, once exposed, Pompeii has been subject to both natural and man-made forces, which have rapidly increased deterioration.