Living on a Volcanos Edge, Italians Practice for Disaster

A piercing alarm burst from millions of cellphones, a signal to hundreds of thousands of people to pack their bags and flee one of Europe’s most dangerous volcanoes.But most of the Italians who heard it shrugged.It was around 5 o’clock on a Friday afternoon, and the alert wasn’t announcing a real crisis.Instead, it was part of a four-day drill this month, coordinated by the Italian civil protection department, to prepare a densely populated area near Naples for the day its residents might face a host of volcanic perils: The ground buckling underfoot.

Ribbons of toxic fumes.Exploding boils of molten rock.The threat does not loom on the horizon, like nearby Mount Vesuvius to the east.

Instead, an eight-mile-wide caldera — riddled with volcanoes — is recessed in the earth and sea west of Naples, forming what is called the Campi Flegrei, or “burning fields.”Most experts believe an eruption remains a remote possibility, but volcanic activity — hundreds of mostly minor earthquakes, along with a measurable rise and subsidence of the earth — has picked up considerably in recent years, panicking some residents and putting the authorities on high alert....