Campi Flegrei, the citizens' concern and the simulation of the eruption

The seismic swarm in Campi Flegrei is causing concern among residents, and the Campania Region has decided to conduct an exercise to test the effectiveness of its evacuation plans.

The announcement was made by Governor Vincenzo De Luca: "Obviously," he explained, "we won't be able to evacuate all the residents of the affected areas, but we can carry out a limited evacuation of a few hundred people to verify" whether the emergency plan is working.

Civil Protection Minister Nello Musumeci—who hopes his ad hoc law (which requires tens and tens of millions) can be passed "within a couple of weeks"—repeatedly emphasizes the need for an evacuation plan that takes into account "the road network of an area of ​​half a million inhabitants, heavily anthropized."

"These interventions should have been done 30, 40 years ago, but there's no point crying over spilt milk; we need to get to work immediately," he added. Legambiente also notes that we're still at a "I hope I run away" stage, when instead "detailed evacuation plans are needed, starting with making escape routes—road, rail, and sea—easily passable."

Meanwhile, many have rewatched two videos posted on YouTube by the INGV in 2011. The first video showed in just 10 minutes the devastation that would occur in the event of an eruption at Campi Flegrei.

This catastrophic scenario, though frightening, is not entirely impossible, as underlined by the INGV (National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology), the Italian body responsible for seismic and volcanic monitoring.

The INGV hypothesized a critical development similar to the 1538 eruption of Monte Nuovo, which was the most recent and least violent of the more than 70 explosive eruptions that occurred in the Campi Flegrei. The simulation was conducted in 2011 and uploaded to YouTube. In this simulation, the reference scenario was the eruption of Agnano Monte Spina, which occurred approximately 4100 years ago, which differs from volcanologists' previous hypotheses.

The first video shows the evolution of the gas temperature (represented in red) and the areas affected during an eruption.

It's impossible to say with certainty which areas of the Campi Flegrei could be affected in the event of an eruption, as there is currently no magma rising to the surface, and therefore there is no cause for alarm. However, the video shows the areas that could be affected, including Bagnoli and Fuorigrotta. Naples appears to be protected from the threat thanks to the Parco Virgiliano.

"We're working," Musumeci observes, "to understand the vulnerability of buildings and to launch a serious communication and information campaign, because the population must be aware that they live in a high-risk area and be ready, if necessary, to take the necessary measures."

Regarding the progress of the bradyseismic phenomenon, De Luca is reassuring: "We are not facing particularly alarming situations because monitoring is carried out practically 24 hours a day," he says.

This monitoring, notes Francesca Bianco, director of the INGV Volcano Department, "has not revealed significant changes in volcanic dynamics." Regarding bradyseism, "we are observing an increase, but not to the levels of the 80s. We don't know its evolution: these are mostly earthquake-related phenomena, and, as is well known, earthquakes cannot be predicted."