Spate of devastating earthquakes and renewed activity of nearby volcano spark fears Italian capital could be facing a ‘big one’
THE Eternal City could be no more after recent devastating earthquakes in central Italy sparked fears of a volcanic eruption near Rome.
Catastrophic seismic activity like August's Amatrice disaster and Sunday's 6.6 magnitude quake that damaged Roman landmarks like St Paul's Bascilica could show the dormant Alban Hills near the city are reawakening, scientists have said.
Underground chambers between five and ten kilometres below the Roman suburbs are filling with magma, pushing the ground up by 2-3mm a year, according to a study published by the journal.
A team from the National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology (INGV) also discovered the volcanic hills 20km southeast of Rome erupt roughly every 31,000 years, the reports.
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Thankfully, that would place the next major eruption at around 1,000 years from now.
However, there are fears that when it does come, it could be a "big one".
"When the eruption happens, it has an explosive effect, like opening a champagne bottle after shaking it," Fabrizio Marra, from INGV, told Italian daily .
"This sort of process has, for example, caused the string of earthquakes that hit this area at the beginning of the 1990s, with minor quakes and a few cases of magnitude four quakes."
But Mr Marra assured that it would make "no sense" to have a plan in place to evacuate Rome in the event of a volcanic eruption.
He said: "Here we are talking about an event that will take place maybe a thousand years from now."
He also explained that while the recent seismic disasters could point towards the Alban Hills reawakening, they were NOT triggers for an impending eruption.
"It's out of the question that they [the recent earthquakes] could have significant effects, at least for now, maybe in a thousand years they will.
"It can only happen with a volcano on the verge of erupting, at these levels there is no possible disturbance that could reach the magma chambers."
On Sunday a 6.6 magnitude quake struck near Visso, leading to the collapse of dozens of buildings.
Luckily many of the worst-hit areas were in no-go zones shut off after the August 24 Amatrice quake that flattened villages and killed nearly 300 people.
Tremors were felt in Rome, with emergency services rushing to close off and inspect precious landmarks for structural damage.
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