Challenging Mount Etna's Power

Three precision blasts combat a raging river of lava

The people on Sicily's east coast have always lived uneasily in the shadow of Mount Etna, which has erupted 22 times in the past 75 years. Two months ago, Europe's tallest active volcano (10,700 ft.) awoke once again. Down its south face surged a molten ribbon of lava that destroyed a dozen buildings and more than 370 acres of fields and forests, causing millions of dollars' worth of damage.

In an effort to divert the magma, Italy's minister of civil protection summoned a team of volcanologists. The strategy: to redirect the lava from its southward path into a wide hollow, away from inhabited areas. The specialists hoped that spreading the lava would speed its cooling, and thus slow the momentum of the flow. The diversion required the removal of a 25-ft. section in a 328-ft.-long natural wall of old lava, and was to be accomplished by precision blasting.

The man in charge of the detonation attempt, the first of its kind in Italy, was Rolf Lennart Abersten, 46, a Swedish engineer who has worked in Milan as an explosives specialist for the past eleven years. The temperature of lava sometimes reaches some 1800DEG F; to prevent the heat from setting off the charges, Abersten and his associates devised an ingenious protective system. It called for installation of four rows of steel tubes in the west side of the old lava wall (lava from the eruption was moving along the wall's east side). Each of the metal tubes contained three channels. One channel was filled with dynamite and water. To keep the explosives cool, air was pumped into the second channel and water into the third.

Unfortunately, before the explosives were ready for detonation, the flowing lava slopped over the wall and temporarily clogged some of the tubes; that added a great deal of new weight to the wall, as well as considerable heat. Abersten could not use the bottom row of explosives because they had become too hot, despite their protective coverings. The total force of the charges dropped from 1,102 lbs. to 881 lbs.

On the morning of May 14, a series of red, white and green celebratory flares shot into the sooty sky above the site. A military bugler tooted a few short notes. Then came the first blast, shaking nearby sandbagged bunkers, where dozens of journalists and officials huddled. It was followed by a second blast, and a third. A portion of the wall crumbled. Some flaming lava poured down the new channel and into the depression, but much of the lava continued down the old path. Only a portion of the molten rock had been diverted. Within four days, the artificial channel had dried up completely.

The volcano last week showed contempt for those trying to conquer its fireworks: it released a poisonous cloud that swept workers from its slopes, showered gray ash on the nearby town of Giarre and sent a new river of lava toward the Rifugio di Sapienza, a tourist shelter it had damaged earlier in the spring. Engineer Abersten, weary but unbowed, warned that another precision blast would be required to make the diversion an unqualified success. Said he: "I don't want to be defeated by Etna." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.