A fireman checks a building in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius.
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Despite its reputation for chaos, Naples is well organized when it comes to using research and technology to measure risk and plan emergency response. Professor Giulio Zuccaro leads the Plinius Institute at the University of Naples Federico II, which has developed complex models for calculating the effects of a natural disaster on individual cities in Italy according to local conditions, including the quality of building construction and viability of roads and other infrastructure. Within minutes of the L'Aquila quake, Plinius had reached what turned out to be a very accurate estimate of the location and severity of damage, which helped guide the Civil Protection authorities' response. "You have to understand the nature of the disaster as quickly as possible," says Zuccaro. "In Naples, one risk is that roads get blocked off, making parts of the city inaccessible for rescue workers. That can transform a disaster into a maxi-disaster."
The potential mother of all maxi-disasters is named Mount Vesuvius, which lies just 7 miles to the east of Naples and is by all accounts the volcano that poses the greatest risk of taking a major human toll. The eruption in A.D. 79 destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum and killed about 16,000 people. There are 18 towns on the city's outskirts, with a combined population of more than 550,000, that could be devastated if the volcano roars again.
The good news is that unlike earthquakes, volcanoes give warning signs--gaseous and seismic--before erupting. Still, volcanology is not an exact science, and evacuation plans are never simple. The fear of sounding a false alarm of a major eruption--which would force an unnecessary evacuation of half a million people for weeks--is right behind the fear of not forcing people to flee when the big one hits, explains Franco Barberi, a top volcanologist and the head of the National Commission on Major Risks. "You need to distinguish risks," says Barberi, noting that a full evacuation would probably take three days.
For now, Vesuvius is dormant, as it has been for more than 60 years. It looks over Naples from the east, with the crystal Mediterranean to the west. Between them is jam-packed, chaotic humanity, though the trash crisis is again dormant as well. For now. Notes Bertolaso: "Naples is a beautiful thing, and like all beautiful things, it's very fragile." And all that is fragile needs the best plans for protection.