[OG Rant: The WP has some lousy spellers on its staff. I read an article earlier where "guilded" was used instead of "gilded." In the following article, the word "torturous" is used. I hate that. It's TORTUOUS, folks. You'd think they could afford a spellchecker. Perhaps my irascibility causes me to look upon the following as (derisive sniff) the icky result of a Creative Writing course and the purchase of a new thesaurus. Okay, okay, I'll say "syrupy" rather than "icky." Or perhaps, in keeping, "the inexorable suffocation of crisp yet evocative writing akin to being thickly coated in Karo on a chilly winter's morning." Harrumph!] Wash Post

Sicily's Beloved Beast of Fire

Mount Etna Instills Pride in Its Forgiving Neighbors

By Daniel Williams Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, August 4, 2001; Page A01

RIFUGIO SAPIENZA, Italy -- The slow-moving, menacing rivers of hot glowing rock flowed from the mountain's several steaming mouths. Black sand from the eruption blew into the air and stung the eyes, coated the ears and scratched the throats of workers trying to channel lava away from scattered buildings. A haze of smoke with the smell of rotten eggs made breathing torturous.

Yet for all the danger and discomfort brought by this latest spectacular eruption of Mount Etna, Europe's most active volcano, a message scrawled in ash on the hood of a parked car expressed the peculiar sentiments of local people: "Etna, We Still Love You."

For two weeks, Etna has alarmed Sicily and all of Italy with a display of erratic power. The volcano's most powerful and sustained eruption in almost a decade has sent uncounted tons of lava creeping toward towns below and given Italians a chance to act heroically and run for cover, argue among themselves, improvise and pray.

But most of all, Etna has offered everyone a chance to renew their affection for life's ambiguities -- in this case a mountain that is the source of wealth, identity and beauty in eastern Sicily, but also a fountainhead of anxiety.

"Etna is basically a good volcano. It just likes to remind us once in a while that good things can also have their bad side. It's a useful lesson," said Calogero Murgia, the chief firefighter for Catania, the largest nearby city. Murgia oversees a group of 30 bulldozer operators and ditch-diggers who are building earthen and stone dikes in an effort to divert lava streams away from built-up areas on Etna's slopes.

The damage so far is limited. The lava has wiped out a pair of way stations for hikers, paths to the summit, a storage shack for snowplows and four pylons that held up a ski lift. And 30-foot-high masses of the stuff now cover the parking lot at the Sapienza tourist complex. However, a laborious and controversial construction of dikes has averted a fiery end for restaurants and souvenir stands.

The farthest reach of Etna's lava fingers remains 2 1/2 miles short of the closest towns, Nicolosi and Belpasso. It would take many more, and more voluminous, bursts of molten rock to threaten them.

All week, Murgia's workers, drafted from the fire department and private life, continued to shore up dikes; the fact that lava not only flows, but also builds up in layers, made their work more difficult. "This can be an endless task for us. The level just keeps rising and rising," said Murgia, who has fought to divert lava floods on Etna four times since 1983.

He gazed at the spectacle as the lava river crept past the Corsaro restaurant, a popular stop for Etna hikers. Bulldozers and backhoes resembled beasts in a prehistoric landscape of fire. The machinery devoured earth, only to regurgitate it atop levees that separate the lava from the restaurant. The roar of diesel engines was answered by thunderous explosions from multiple craters near Etna's summit.

The lava flow looked like a fiery, undulating snake, its head a splayed stream far down the slope, its tail a billowing cloud above. Collisions of rock and coagulating pumice made odd clicking sounds. "Etna is a monster, an inexorable monster," said a tired Murgia. At one point last week, lava breached one of the dikes and almost engulfed two earthmovers. The machinery and men escaped in panic.

One of Murgia's dust-encrusted lava jockeys, bulldozer driver Antonio Serafica, reported: "I'm always right on top of the fire. Sometimes, I depend on the firemen to wet the machine and me down with water all the time. We're doing all right, but let's face it, Etna has the last word."

The word from Etna late this week was one of relative calm. Eruptions were less enormous, the lava volume reduced from about 35 cubic yards a second in the early days to about six yesterday. The relative hiatus gave local emergency workers and onlookers a chance to philosophize about Etna's multiple personalities.

In Sicilian dialect, Etna is called simply the Muntagna, the Mountain.

"We never see the Mountain as an enemy," said Alessio Limina, a pharmacology student who volunteered to staff an emergency radio station at Sapienza. "Everything that grows around here is because of Etna. The taste of our wild strawberries, our white peaches, our olives come from it."

"We are proud of the Mountain. It's the biggest and the most active of all volcanoes in Europe," added Salvatore Barbara, a medical student and another volunteer. "The Mountain is in us. We belong to it and we're at home with its eruptions. It's like a bad-tempered mother. Her children know she loves them. The Mountain is a blessing, on balance."

One of Etna's blessings is tourism, but the eruptions have upset the busy midsummer season. Ash, which makes tarmac slippery, has forced periodic closures of Catania's airport, the gateway to eastern Sicily and its famous beaches near Taormina. It was closed again yesterday.

Dust has laced morning cappuccinos and infested the clothing of irritated vacationers in Nicolosi and Belpasso. To attract tourists back, local mayors have been pressing for permission to operate bus tours at dawn and dusk, when Etna's sparkling mouths and glowing ribbons are set against a pinkish sky.

On the eve of the recent eruptions, Etna signaled restlessness: The ground surface expanded a bit, for instance, suggesting a buildup of pressure inside. This information was passed to Italy's Civil Protection Agency, which is responsible for issuing warnings and ordering evacuations. But no one could predict the location, date or intensity of the coming eruption, so authorities merely called for calm. This decision, in turn, created controversy: Should earth-moving equipment have been put into place earlier?

Once emergency crews moved to protect Sapienza, the wisdom of channeling lava became a topic of debate. Lava cools faster if it is allowed to spread. Channeling it in a narrow passage keeps it hot longer and extends the path of its destructive flow.

The desire to save Sapienza, with its tourist facilities that employ 300 people, outweighed these concerns. "If the buildings were destroyed, it would be a big political fight to relocate. Nicolosi wants to keep them nearby, but other towns would have battled to have the site transferred," said Giuseppe Valerio, a journalist. "This is an area with vivid memories of poverty. Every job counts."

All this destructive glory has long entranced inhabitants of Sicily. The ancient Greeks regarded Etna's top-most crater as the home of the god of fire, a smithy with iron-working equipment. The Romans called him Vulcan.

Christianity did not dim the notion that Etna was a living force. On eight occasions, Catanians brought out the veil of a Christian martyr, sant'Agata, to brake the lava's flow. The last time, in 1886, a cardinal prayed with the veil near Nicolosi and the melted mass congealed 300 yards from the town.

After Etna erupted last month, locals clamored for sant'Agata's veil to be put into play again. Catania's archbishop, Luigi Bonmarito, said no. Instead, he led an open-air prayer service of 7,000 faithful in Belpasso at a shrine of the Virgin Mary. During the service, the archbishop pleaded: "Etna, close your mouth."

Some people saw the veil's absence as a lesson in faith: Belief is more important than relics. Some students of Sicilian reasoning saw another logic.

"Of course, the archbishop didn't want to apply sant'Agata's veil now, when things are not so dangerous. Suppose he needs it later on? It's better to keep it in reserve," said Alessio Limina, one of the emergency radio volunteers. "Sant'Agata is the ultimate Sicilian weapon. Rescue workers like us are just a distant second line of defense."

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2001