Vesuvius residents appeal to Strasbourg

(ANSA) - Strasbourg, October 28 - Italy's plans to save residents on Mt Vesuvius from an eruption are not good enough, 12 residents of the most at-risk zone claimed in a letter to the European Court of Human Rights Monday Emergency plans are "inadequate" and many evacuation routes have been blocked by illegal building, the Naples residents told the Strasbourg court.
Naples occasionally goes through scares about its famous volcano. The last major fright came in August 2007 when US magazine National Geographic claimed that current evacuation plans wouldn't get people out in time if ''the world's most dangerous volcano'' blew its stack like it did in 79 AD, burying the Ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Entitled Vesuvius, Asleep for Now, the report claimed that evacuation plans were not sufficiently up-to-date. The city's anxiety levels fell after Vesuvius watchers issued a comprehensive denial. In recent years, Naples officials have repeatedly played down reports that Vesuvius might be set to blow. Top vulcanologist Franco Barberi recently said that even in the worst-case scenario, Naples' evacuation plan would enable the threatened populace to be smoothly evacuated. Italy has created simulations of all possible kinds of eruptions, Barberi said. Recent eruption forecasts have varied, saying the dormant volcano could slumber on for decades or centuries. Around a million people currently live and work around Vesuvius and at the current rate of expansion this could swell by a further 200,000 by 2016. In 2003 authorities in Naples started offering people living on the volcano's slopes hefty cash incentives to move away. So far there have been few takers. Vesuvius has erupted about three dozen times since it buried Pompeii and Herculaneum, killing about 2,000 people. The most serious blast killed some 4,000 people in 1631.