Yesterday, the French public radio station France Inter, one of the most listened to stations across the Alps, dedicated itself to a podcast lasting a few minutes defined as a “Zoom on the Campi Flegrei”. The service is currently generating a certain fear, especially due to the message conveyed in the title: “In Italy, Naples is preparing for the ‘Big One’, a gigantic earthquake”, which refers to a maxi bradyseismic event.
The Campi Flegrei – explains the report – are a vast volcanic area where 500,000 people live and which includes part of Naples. Since last September the area has been on alert again, with earthquakes of over 4 degrees of magnitude”. “Living in a territory that trembles – continues the description of the podcast – This is daily life in Pozzuoli, a town of 80,000 inhabitants in the heart of Phlegraean Fields. Here we live with two threats, that of an earthquake and that of a volcanic eruption. The city sits in a vast crater formed thousands of years ago. Under the feet of the residents there are 70 eruptive vents, they are the Campi Flegrei, whose volcanic activity causes the lowering or raising of the earth, bradyseism. Everything is monitored at the Vesuvian Observatory in Naples. Opposite Pozzuoli, in the bay, an ancient city was swallowed up during the tumultuous history of the Campi Flegrei. Beauty could not resist the danger”. Here the reference is to the submerged city of Baia.
The report itself then ranges from the description of the latest significant bradyseismic event (the 3.7 magnitude earthquake recorded on Sunday 14 April) and the exercises that began last Monday with the evacuation test of four schools in the area, with an alarmist tone that recalls from close to that of another recent media case regarding the Campi Flegrei, namely the documentary of the Swiss TV RSI, also at the center of much controversy.
Is there a possibility of the “Big One”?
We asked geologist and councilor of the X Municipality Diego Civiitillo about the “Big One”. “The history of bradyseism, confirmed by the studies of recent years, is that of short events which do not go beyond, approximately, the fifth degree of the Richter scale – he explained to us – To be clear, we are not talking about the classic earthquake, consequence of the rupture of a fault, and which therefore generates considerable energy for considerable durations. A 6 or 7 degree earthquake that lasts a minute or a minute and a half is obviously devastating for structures. Can an earthquake lasting a few seconds, of magnitude 5 although superficial, cause a building to collapse? If built in a dignified manner, no. In short, bradyseism is not immediately destructive for the structures”. So the advice in case of earthquakes (there was one just last night) is therefore do not leave the house. “Doing so has no real use – he adds Civitillo – It is something that people do out of fear, to feel safer, but indeed it cannot be ruled out that by doing so they may not put themselves in even more danger. Very often those who come down from the house stop right below the buildings, and the detachment of cornices, fronts or deteriorated plaster is the first thing that can happen after an earthquake. It’s the type of behavior that makes you understand how little bradyseism has been explained to residents.”
The engineer’s response
The National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, Ingv, recently “responded” to the Swiss television documentary (whose title was “Naples, the supervolcano that threatens Europe”) by underlining how the program in question had done more than anything else disinformation.
“This is – we read in a note signed by the president of INGV Carlo Doglioni, the director of the Volcanoes department of INGV Francesca Bianco and the director of the Vesuvian Observatory of INGV Mauro Di Vito – information not based on data, and which completely ignores all the important scientific and planning activities that have seen, and still see, scientists and Civil Protection working side by side to manage to the best of their knowledge the volcanic danger and the related risk of one of the most anthropized areas in the world. world”.
From the INGV they continue: “The Campi Flegrei are the largest active urbanized caldera in the heart of the European continent. Since 2005 it has been affected by the bradyseismic phenomenon which causes the lifting of the ground, earthquakes and fumarolic emissions. The caldera is monitored by a system of continuous multiparametric monitoring. All the data provided by this system, at the moment, do not show evidence of the imminence of a volcanic eruption, let alone of large proportions”.
“Volcanic risk mitigation actions – continues the INGV – are based on sharing correct information on the state of the volcano. Sharing can take place in multiple forms, such as the publication of data and bulletins on institutional websites, school meetings, meetings with the population exposed to risk, seminars, conferences, training courses for journalists and so on. The broad spectrum of these activities is continuously practiced by our Institute”. In light of this commitment, the organization defines the content of the documentary and the articles that relaunch it as “dissonant”.
