Vulcan's Fiery Forge

Nearly every resident of the small Sicilian winegrowing village of Sant'Alfio last week joined the procession up the fuming, rumbling mountain. Praying, singing hymns and carrying relics of their patron saints, the villagers advanced to within a few yards of the glowing, smoking wall of lava. As his flock knelt before the threatening stream, Sant'Alfio's parish priest, Don Francesco Parisi, tilted his head skyward and implored God to "send away this menace from us and from our homes."

Ten minutes after the somber procession began, however, the angry mountain responded with another explosion of hot vapor and clouds of sand. To those at the scene the outburst sounded like the beginning of the Apocalypse.

In fact, it was the latest and one of the most violent episodes in the current eruptions of 10,970-ft.-high Mount Etna, Europe's largest active volcano.

Hot Magma. Etna's fireworks have provided Europeans with one of the most exciting spectacles in years, and tourists flooded to the region. There were also more serious visitors: the numerous volcanologists and other earth scientists who are clambering over Etna's slopes, hoping to learn more about the processes at work inside the mountain. Most volcanoes lie near the meeting place of the massive, slow-moving plates that are believed to make up the earth's outer shell. Their crunching movements apparently cause cracks in the earth's crust that enable hot material known as magma to escape in the form of lava. Many scientists think that Etna was created by the meeting of the African and European plates.

Although the increased emission of gases from Etna in recent years gave scientists some hint of impending trouble, they are still unable to predict eruptions with any accuracy. As a result, they concentrate on trying to minimize damage once the lava flows. Belgian Volcanologist Haroun Tazieff, whose asbestos-suited sorties into fuming craters round the globe have earned him the sobriquet "The Inferno Detective," has suggested bombing Etna to test methods for diverting the lava flow from villages. The Italians shrugged off the idea. It could raise a Solomonic question: Whose land should be spared and whose should be ruined?

Dantesque Scene. Such problems are hardly new. Famed among the ancients as the forge of the fire god Vulcan, Etna has acted up throughout recorded history. During medieval times, its lava completely destroyed the city of Catania. The latest series of rumblings--the most dramatic in two decades and the eleventh of the century--began in the late afternoon of April 5. In a Dantesque scene, gases, glowing cinders, red-hot boulders and seething lava (temperature: about 2,000DEG F.) spewed out of newly opened boccas, or mouths, on Etna's upper slopes. Hot tongues of lava engulfed the old three-story cement-and-stone volcanological observatory near the top of the mountain and bent the pylons of an aerial tramway into uselessness. The fiery streams rolled over protective rock dikes placed in their path, ignited valuable fruit trees like matchsticks and threatened Sant'Alfio and at least one other village on the highly populated, fertile slopes. Total damage so far: about $5,000,000.

Scores of reporters and cameramen have arrived to record the geological drama. In one memorable scene, TV cameras caught a highway bridge on Etna's panoramic Sea and Snow drive being twisted and melted by encroaching lava. The eruptions have also created a carnival-like atmosphere; a few of the tourists have gone so far as to cheer whenever the lava pours into a fresh field or orchard. That behavior has threatened another kind of blowup: fighting between insensitive sightseers and angered Sicilian farmers.

At week's end Sant'Alfio was evacuated in advance of the relentless lava. Lacking any help from the scientists, the people of the mountain could only continue to beseech their saints for help in cooling Vulcan's fiery forge.

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