|  | Photos 15.-20.2.2000Once again STROMBOLI ON-LINE is proud to present a great collection of unique photos by SOL-correspondent Marco Fulle. Some taken under
considerable risk to his personal safety and must not be regarded as an invitation to approach Etna's summit craters, which, at the
present time, must be considered highly active and dangerous. All times are local. To give a sense of the perspective, camera lens
ocal lengths are given (i.e. f=28mm). The pictures on this page link to larger photos (20 to 100 KB). At the bottom of this page you
find a very personal account of Marco's experiences on 15. February 2000. It appears he was just about as close to the action as is
possible for a very daring volcanologist...
Abbreviations: BN = Bocca Nuova; NEC = North East Crater; SEC = South East Crater | 
15 Feb 2000, 15:00, fish-eye photo (diagonal = 180°) from the BN S rim. From left to right: 200 m wide Oct 1999 vent, NEC behind the Diaframma, and the new E vents below the 1964 pinnacle, above which the moon can be seen. | 
15 Feb 2000, 16:00, fish-eye photo. Marco (shadow on the right) taking photos of bomb impact craters (left) of the 14. Feb. SEC paroxysm. They expose snow below the ash layer deposited by the same paroxysm. Background: BN (center) and SEC (right). | 
15 Feb 2000, 16:30, fish-eye photo. Front of 14. Feb. SEC lava flow. In the background, from left to right: 1971 cone, Tom Pfeiffer, BN, and SEC with its South fissure. | 
15 Feb 2000, 17:30, f=28mm from Torre del Filosofo hut. Etna's majestic shadow high above the Aspromonte is greeting us. | 
15 Feb 2000, 17:50, f=28mm from Torre del Filosofo hut. The summit vent of SEC is being filled by steam, the precursor of a SEC paroxysm. | 
15 Feb 2000, 18:00, f=135mm from Torre del Filosofo hut. Red bombs start to bounce in the summit vent of SEC. This strombolian phase will last ten minutes only. | 
15 Feb 2000, 18:10, f=135mm. Foto sequence one minute. A bright yellow gush of lava pours out of the SEC fissure on its S flank. The flow length increases from 20 to 50 m. Lava fountains on the SEC summit vent reach a height of 100 m. | 
15 Feb 2000, 18:10, f=135mm from Torre del Filosofo hut. Great, continuous lava fountains rise 200 m high from the SEC summit vents. The lava flow decelerates from 5 m/s to no more than 1 m/s. | 
15 Feb 2000, 18:20, f=28 mm from Torre del Filosofo. The continuous lava fountain, partly masked by dense ash swirls rising vortically, is 500 m high above the SEC summit. The lava flow is 200 m long and its front is 200 m wide. | 
15 Feb 2000, 18:20, f=135mm. Majestic lava fountains 200 m high rise from the summit SEC vents until at 18:30 all is over (right), leaving an incandescent SEC lightening the scene as in daylight. Lava continues to flow from the SEC S eroded fissure. | 
16 Feb 2000, 12:00, f=28mm. Fresh snow over the ash layer deposited by SEC on 14.2. proves that this bomb landed during the paroxysm of 15.2. Our shelter (Torre del Filosofo, center background) is halfway between the meter-sized crater and SEC (left background) | 
16 Feb 2000, 16:10, f=135mm from Torre del Filosofo hut. Another SEC paroxysm is starting. A 20 m high liquid gush of molten lava pours out from the fissure on the S SEC flank, while dense lava fountains begin to jet from its summit vent. | 
16 Feb 2000, 16:10, f=135mm (left), 28mm (right). The dense gush pouring out from the S fissure increases in height from 30 to 70 m, feeding a lava flow 50 to 200 m long. The lava fountains on the SEC summit vents increase in height from 100 to 300 m. | 
16 Feb 2000, 16:10, f=28mm. The lava flow has reached the SEC basis and veils of dense white steam its right half. The liquid gush is 100 m high. The SEC paroxysm has reached its climax and the lava fountain is 500 m high. The yellow dust is caused by bomb impacts on the slopes of SEC. | 
16 Feb 2000, 16:10, f=28mm. Suddenly, the gush drops, and dense ash clouds on the right of lava columns 200 m high follow its collapse. The whole SEC flanks are now masked by the yellow dust from the bomb impacts and the white steam released by the liquid lava flow. | 
16 Feb 2000, 16:10, f=28mm. The lava fountains transform into dark jets of lava, bombs and black ash rising vertically at enormous speed into the sky. The increase of ash ejection marks the end of the paroxysm. Thousands of bombs continue to fall on SEC's slopes. | 
16 Feb 2000, 16:20, fish-eye image (diagonal=180°). Marco and Tom (right foreground) are close to the roof of the Torre del Filosofo shelter and suffer from heavy ash fall from the kilometers high eruptive column at the end of the SEC paroxysm. Ionian sea in the right background. | 
16 Feb 2000, 16:40, f=28mm from the 1971 cone. The lava flow of the SEC paroxysm (about 2m thick) is still advancing at about 0.2 m/s. In the foreground impact craters of the 15.2 paroxysm. In the background SEC with the new double fissure on its S flank. | 
18 Feb 2000, 16:50, f=28mm from Rifugio Sapienza. The 3km high ash column of another SEC paroxysm is driven southward by a storm masking Etna's South flank with flying snow. Montagnola on the right. | 
19 Feb 2000, 9:30, f=28mm from Rifugio Sapienza. Another eruptive column of a SEC paroxysm stands high above the cinder cones of Monte Silvestri Superiore. Zeus, who had reached Etna in October as an eagle, is now flying away as a swan ... | 
19 Feb 2000, 19:00, f=28mm from Serra la Nave. Moon rising behind Monte Vetore, and thane ice cloud refracts the moonlight into rainbow colours. Constellations Leo and Ursa Major in the sky. | 
21 Feb 2000, 13:00, f=28mm. The snowstorm of the previous weekend has filled the old cableway station with heaps of driftsnow. | 
21 Feb 2000, 17:00, f=28mm. This is not Antarctica, but Etna in winter! Tom and Roby fight a cold north wind. Note the sun dogs (sunlight refracted by ice crystals of the flying snow). | 
21 Feb 2000, 17:00, f=28mm from Montagnola. Snow rivolets cover the Etna S flank. Background: Monte Frumento Supino (left, and, below it, the old cableway station) and Etna summit craters veiled steam. | "THE GOLDEN COLUMN" by Marco Fulle
(written on 17 Feb 2000)
Five of us find ourselves at the Torre del Filosofo hut, after the sunset and the majestic Etna's shadow high over the Aspromonte have
greeted us. It is almost dark, we are tormented by a violent icy mistral, which has dazed us during six long hours of waiting. The
situation reminds me of that joke about an Italian a french an english and a German guy on an aeroplane. In fact we are on an ice-cold
aeroplane, surrounded by the eternal inviting Sicilian summer, so that I ask myself: What are we doing here, in the ice? I am here with
Tom, who is beginning his volcanological career, David, a perfectly equipped Welsh cameraman specialized in TV documentaries, Thorsten,
a german freelance photographer, and a french madame, who seems a french madame, but who in reality is an angel descended from the
heaven to herald the good tale.
The good tale enchaining us in this windy icebox is that the South East Cone, majestically towering above us one km to the North, has
been sleeping for more than 24 hours: when it will wake up, unprecedented exploits will happen. David, as a rigorous professional man,
has declared that he will not leave this place before the expected paroxysm is captured on film. I whisper to Tom: "This David is an
unlucky charm, it is not so you can take Etna ..." We laugh heartily, we are now certain that soon we will escape the ice without
having reached our goal.
We begin to pack the rucksacks for the return trip, hoping for better luck in the next days, when the angel starts to talk with a more
and more surprised Tom. I ask to Tom what is she saying, and he: "She says that a fumarole is increasing in strength within the fissure
of the South East Cone, as was the case yesterday before the last paroxysm". I look at that, but my expert eye does not detect anything
new. "And how much time till this parox?" Tom again confers with the ecstatic angel, then he incredulous turns to me: "She says it will
start in a quarter of an hour". The glance between me and Tom can well be transalated as it follows: "She's so glad at believing
this..." "And so what do we do?" "Yes, we can well wait for another half an hour, after having lost six ..."
We wait, and now the fumaroles indeed seem more violent ..... is it all possible? I continue to run this way and that to keep warm,
and suddenly, while I'm heading towards South East Cone, what do I see! Red bombs begin to bounce in its vent. "It starts! starts!
starts!" I run, we all run to take our cameras, but during the next ten minutes South East Cone does not consider us worthy of more
than modest strombolian explosions. I am discouraged: "Is this to be all?"
My poor faith is soon humiliated: in the fissure dividing the south flank, a yellow gush of golden lava pours out, and it suddenly
becomes a big fountain vomiting a fluid yellow flow running fast, at more than 5 m/s, down the South East Cone south flank. In the
meantime, from the vent on the top, giant, yellow fountains in a few seconds rise to 20, 50, 100, 300 meters, giant, yellow golden
fountains made of honey. Is it possible? Possible? Possible? The speed at which everything has risen, with which the silent and dead
cone has become a god in action, annihilates me astonished. I snap photos like a frantic, by free hand, in the wind, with a few hopes,
but the lava is so bright to require daylight exposure times in full night, against any reason.
The yellow jets and fountains increase, the lava flow already expands at the Cone's base, untill a different jet, enormous, with which
the South East Cone clears his uvula to sing at the top of his voice, explodes oblique. I do not know how, but I understand it is
directed precisely towards us. I take my cameras and run under the roof of the Torre del Filosofo hut, shouting "To the shelter!".
Apparently I sound convincing enough, because in a few seconds we find ourselves five below the roof. Only ten seconds later dull
bumps start coming from the roof. I think: "Now everything can happen", I turn and we see dozens of red bombs falling all around us,
breaking in thousands of splinters bouncing this way and that on the snow. Soon the bumping on the roof ends and I find myself to
think: "No, nothing will happen anymore".
David and Thorsten are already out, looking further and further up, astonished. I take the first camera I find, I run out too and look
up. A golden column is rising from the South East Cone and, as Pindar has shown us, is holding up the sky, rising all the way to the
zenith! In the sky it fragments in thousands of golden bombs, which would be destined to us by the human reason. However, kind Eolus,
who continues to shake me preventing me to take not shaken photos, takes the bombs away by bringing them far away towards the East.
No more than a hundred meters from us, between Torre del Filosofo and South East Cone, a curtain of red bombs falls into the snow, and
millions of impacts produce that rustle you can hear during the most violent summer downpours only. This rustle, however, is
surmounted by a loud hollow roar shouted by South East Cone, who, seemingly still unsatisfied, trills with thunders, twice per second.
Every thunder corresponds to a pulse in the fire column: I count ten of them up up to the sky. On the left the column is surrounded by
the largest bombs, unaffected by the wind. On the right, it is half masked by the ash column which is rising skywards in whirls, before
black, then white pure steam, rising all the way up to the moon.
During a long long life lasted ten minutes, we stay enraptured to adore this golden chain linking the sky to the earth. Only the
awareness of how it is impossible to photograph it, both due to the strong wind, and the extreme brightness contrast between the
fountain bright yellow core and the marvellous swirls of black ash rising vortically, only this irritates me. But soon I understand
that one must not even try to photograph a god in action: and how to register that roar, and that red rain on the snow? Quickly as it
had started, the column dwindle as if it were sucked back into the South East Cone. In only a few seconds its height is halved, we
barely have the time to photograph the last exhausted fountains and the Cone itself, completely glowing now, so much that it is
impossible to distinguish it from the lava flow, now advancing on a front half a kilometre wide.
Now that all is over, only the incandenscent South East Cone is illuminating our faces as if it were daylight. I turn to look at my
friends. Oh, one should give away everything to have the chance to see so happy men, happy of having seen Zeus in action and not to be
incinerated, happy of having seen the bright Apollo's face and not to have become crazy, so childy happy to be convinced that this is
really the best possible world, if it is able to do all this.
Thorsten suddenly brandishes his cellular phone to tell about lava fountains more than a kilometre high, David at the end bursts into
welsh shouts, only Tom remains motionless, staring at the incandescent South East Cone and, beyond that, the highway that he will
follow straight for all his life. But what is beyond comparison is the face of my angel, full of that secret joy that a few of lucky
scientists have experienced in their life: that of having predicted a phenomenon (and what a phenomenon!) which has precisely happened.
As soon as I understand this, I see that she has understood I have understood: then I must, I absolutely must do a thing. I run to
her, I kiss her and I shout to her: "But have you understood? Have you understood how big a present have you done to us?" I do not
remember which language I used, I do not know what she has understood ... I do not even know her name, I will not see her anymore. |
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