Residents of a European city live in fear of a Supervolcano eruption with earthquakes every day.
The powerful earthquake that shook Naples on Monday caused huge damage in the historic city but it also served as a warning that a future quake could trigger a volcanic explosion.
One leading volcanologist warned that mass evacuations might be needed as many people live on the doorstep of a so-called Supervolcano, reports GB News.
Last week, the region experienced the largest earthquake in four decades when a 4.2 magnitude quake struck at the volcanic field, known as the Campi Flegrei or Phlegraean Fields.
The Campi Flegrei lies across the bay of Naples from Pompeii, where thousands perished when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. But it is a much bigger volcano than Vesuvius and it would be catastrophic if it ever exploded.
The Campi Flegrei – which is similar to the Yellowstone caldera in the United State – but holds a much higher level of risk, given more than 3 million people live close by.
Giuseppe De Natale, former head of the Vesuvius observatory at the National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology, said the last time Campi Flegrei suffered a similar burst of earthquakes in the 1980s, some 40,000 people were temporarily evacuated from nearby Pozzuoli.
“Currently, I believe the more immediate risk is seismic. But it is clear that one must also consider the possibility of an eruption,” he told Reuters.
Although experts say an eruption is unlikely, the Campi Flegrei caldera – which has a diameter of about 12-15 km – has the potential to be devastating.
One of the site’s largest eruptions occurred almost 39,000 years ago, causing magma to be projected as far as Greenland, 2,800 miles away.
