![]() ![]() But living with a quiescent volcano is still hazardous. No activity has been observed since 1944, except for several flank collapses inside the caldera that have raised false alarms of an impending eruption. 79, when, after a century of inactivity, Vesuvius unleashed voluminous clouds of hot gas and ash along with rock and pyroclastic flows that entombed Herculaneum and Pompeii, killing an estimated 30,000 people. Of course, the most famous eruption in the volcano’s long history occurred in A.D. It was the worst eruption of the volcano since 1872, 72 years prior. The 1944 eruption of Vesuvius, the volcano’s most recent, occurred 72 years ago this month. newsreels recorded the eruption and the evacuation of San Sebastiano’s residents, who, assisted by Allied soldiers, piled household goods and belongings onto wagons as lava advanced toward the village. On March 17, Mount Vesuvius began an eruption that, over the ensuing week and a half, rained down rocks the size of basketballs, covered some areas with up to a meter of ash, and released a slow-moving wall of volcanic rock, lava and debris that crushed and burned everything in its path. In mid-March 1944, they faced yet another catastrophe, this one a natural disaster that would destroy their town. Credit: National Archives.įour-and-a-half years into World War II, the residents of San Sebastiano, Italy - a Neapolitan village on the western slopes of Mount Vesuvius - had already endured much misery: dictatorial rule, invasion, occupation and bombings. Mount Vesuvius last erupted in March 1944, seven months after the Allied invasion of Italy.
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