Etna canal started
NZPA Catania, Sicily Dozens of bulldozers and trucks attacked the rugged terrain on Mount Etna yesterday to construct a unique canal to divert molten lava from inhabited areas. Experts said that it would take a week to 10 days to finish the ditch, that will be at least three metres deep and seven metres wide.
More than 100 workers manning 70 trucks, 15 steam shovels, and five bulldozers scurried up and down the south-eastern slope of Europe’s most active volcano. They hope to remove 15,000 cubic metres of earth a day, which will be used to /buttress the walls of the canal. The $66 million plan, believed to be the first such
effort to divert lava, is designed to force most of the molten lava that has been spewing for more than a month from a crater at an elevation of 2350 metres towards an uninhabited natural basin.
Officials said that they had decided to build a single 450-metre-long dam on the downhill side of the basin to impede any overflow.
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Press, 6 May 1983, Page 6
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174Etna canal started Press, 6 May 1983, Page 6
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