VESUVIUS ERUPTION

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 March 1944, Page 5

VESUVIUS ERUPTION

LAVA NEARING NAPLES?

LONDON, March 22

According to the Paris radio, the lava from Mount Vesuvius has now reached within three miles of the city of Naples. Another report states that the stream of lava is 400 yards wide. It is advancing at the rate of 1000 yards an hour.

Scores of British and American Army trucks are still removing household goods from the threatened areas, while inhabitants tarry aimlessly, as though infected by the slowness of destruction. People are showing remarkable indifference to the disaster. FARMS SUBMERGED. (Rec. 10.15) LONDON, March 22. The flow of lava from the seething crater of Vesuvius was swelled after a fresh eruption this morning. The glowing mass had already swept away the first houses in Cercolo. The latest eruption shot up flames 200 ft and showered the countryside with cinders and lava dust as far away as Salerno, 20 miles to the south-east. Reuter’s Naples correspondent says he has just flown over Vesuvius, “where the force of angry Nature is a thousand times more impressive than the battle between man.”

Thousands of people jammed the roadways as they flew from the path of the molten mass. Hundreds of attractive little homesteads and farms are submerged under its relentless flow. There is one main channel, with dozens of subsidiary flows. There is little traffic oh the dusty roads, just swarms of people. Small groups of men are backing slowly from the advancing lava and it is not surprising thar they are fascinated and almost hypnotised by the fantastic spectacle. One man was seen racing the lava for the possession of green vegetables planted in a small plot. As the lava reached the fringe of his garden he pulled the vegetables out by handfuls and raced back and put them in a don-key-drawn cart. POMPEII DISTRICT (Rec. 12.35 p.m.) LONDON, Mar. 22. The Allied troops in the Salerno area are now wearing steel helmets for protection against the burning lava which is raining down from the sky. The village? of Pollena, two miles north-west of San Sebastiano, is reported partly destroyed, and is being evacuated. Arrangements were made for the immediate evacuation of about 17,000 people from Naples Plain. The main stream of lava -is flowing towards Cercola. The Associated Press correspondent at Pompeii says that the eruption of Vesuvius covered a wide strip of countryside near here with a coating of ashes more than two feet deep. Showers of hot ashes are still falling, immobilising transport and hampering the evacuation of the in-

habitants.