ITALY: Residents in the shadow of the fire-spitting Mount Etna breathed a sigh of relief yesterday as lava rivers flowing from Europe's most active volcano seemed to slow.
Experts though could not rule out the threat of more earthquakes, which have jolted the volcano awake and left hundreds of families homeless in the town of Santa Venerina.
For the fourth day running, Etna shot out fountains of fire up to 100 metres high, producing plumes of smoke stretching as far as Africa and visible from space.
Scientists said they had recorded three tremors around Etna in the early hours of Wednesday, measuring between 2.0 and 2.9 on the Richter scale, but they were nonetheless upbeat.
"The volcano . . . hasn't reached a stable erupting state but we are starting to see that everything seems more calm," said Mr Enzo Boschi, director of the national geophysics institute. "There is a lava front that has almost stopped and one that is still moving, but not too quickly"
Rescue workers in Linguaglossa, a ski town about 8 km from the biggest lava flow, said they were still on alert but residents were safe. "As far as the citizens are concerned, everything is under control but we are still worried about future earthquakes," a civil protection official said.
Continuing a decades-old tradition, Linguaglossa residents have paraded a statue of their patron saint from the church to the train station and left it there to ward off danger.
Further south in Santa Venerina, the town rocked by an earthquake measuring 4.4 on the Richter scale, many residents chose to sleep in their cars rather than risk being buried in their homes by debris from new tremors.
Etna, which had its last major eruption in 1992, is almost constantly rumbling, but experts say its fissures act like vents, releasing pressure at regular intervals instead of allowing it to build up and produce a massive explosion.
The Prime Minister, Mr Silvio Berlusconi, on Tuesday declared a state of emergency in the region around Etna.- (Reuters)