Mount Etna, Two Weeks After Eruption. Summit, Hotel

Mount Etna, Sicily; summit two weeks after eruption

Mount Etna. Drive all the way up, even a few weeks after a major eruption. The roads had been cleared, with freshly dark lava piles along the side.  Thread your way through.  The side poles mark the road so the lava plows know where to go.

Mount Etna, Sicily. Hotel at the top.

There were only 20 of us or so in the entire hotel.  It is a comfortable, but not glitzy, facility. Fitting for the place where focus is on the volcano and not tourism.


Mount Etna, Sicily, police evacuation van at summit

Wherever we have gone, we find reasonable safety provisions for the unexpected.  Here, if we wanted to stay at the newly opened hotel, see www.bestofsicily.com/etna/, we had to agree that in case of seismic activity setting off alarms, we would leave our car and go down with only what we could carry, in the police van.


The police and their van stayed overnight at the hotel at the top. In case of disturbance, we would leave the car and go down with them, so we did not unpack.

Mount Etna, Sicily, seismology center, summit

Mt. Etna, Sicily, lava fields 

There is an extensive seismological center there, keeping tabs, and the views are panoramic. We enjoyed ourselves and enjoyed fine food.

All was dried lava and there were substantially smoking crevices and craters. The lava had stopped just before it reached the hotel. Before leaving for Italy, we had been watching the eruptions from the US on TV. See an overview of Etna (Aetna) and Man at "//www.boris.vulcanoetna.com/ETNA_andman.


Mt. Etna, Sicily, lava piles at roadside

Getting back to normal:  There are high walls of lava clumps after the roads are cleared. They settle with time. Very porous.  We have one as a paperweight. Not very weighty.

Dust also wears them down, and all seems to fertilize the hillsides once the heat-lava damage is over.

Learn how to manufacture a building material from lava magma here: www.patentstorm.us/patents/6551541.html.

What is lava like? Think pumice. Lava rock has been a building material for centuries. See www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob/

There is a digital object identifier link at that site. This would be an excellent geo-tourism site because of the geological sites and attractions. See book "Geotourism" by Ross Dowling at this site: elsevier.com/wps/find/bookdescription.cws_home/706060/description#description.