Land houses around Vesuvius would not withstand an eruption: they are designed only to withstand falling ash. This is the result of a study on the risk of an eruption of Vesuvius conducted from 2006 to 2010 in collaboration with the Plinio center of the Federico II of Naples and coordinated by Maurizio Indirli of the Enea research center in Bologna. Indirli is among the organizers of the international conference 'Resilience and sustainability of cities in dangerous environments', scheduled in Naples until Friday, during which he will present the salient aspects of the research. To hypothesize the effects of natural disasters in urban areas, Vesuvius was taken as a pilot case and Torre del Greco as a reference city. In this area, 153 buildings were investigated, including private homes, public offices and schools, as well as some Vesuvian villas. The consequences that a sub-Plinian type 1 volcanic eruption, the one considered in the Civil Protection plan, could cause on these structures were considered. The actions concern seismic events, ash fall with vertical loads on the roofs and pyroclastic flows, therefore lateral actions on the structures. "The result of the study shows that the structures were designed to resist only vertical loads - explains Indirli - and not other types of possible actions. It is important to address the problem from the point of view of sustainability and resilience not only for Vesuvius, but also for the Campi Flegrei, to expand these checks, to think about a general reorganization at a regional level of volcanic risk and to make a leap forward by involving all national and international scientific institutions".
The study highlighted the structural vulnerability of the area in the event of a volcanic eruption and on this topic the statement of the researched Flavio Dovrai, thermo-fluid dynamic engineer, president of Gves and professor at New York University, among the most important scholars of Vesuvius and Campi Flegrei, was explosive. "Normally the structures are imagined based on the probable types of seismicity that can occur - explained Dovran - but if you want to decide to live in dangerous environments like this, you should design the structures capable of withstanding the maximum extent of the events". Planning the evacuation for a medium-scale eruption, as is happening today, is therefore equivalent to doing "half the work - he reasons - because for example the one in Pompeii in 79 AD would be ten times more powerful and in that case the plans would be of little use". Even the evacuation plans currently in use are "better than nothing", but "they are a forced and mistaken operation, which aims to remove people from that territory".
Article published on November 26, 2018 - 18:56
