The last eruption of Mount Vesuvius

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 15 March 2024

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

The Mount Vesuvius eruption that buried Pompeii in 79AD is well known, but far fewer people know about the last time the volcano erupted in 1944.

It was World War Two, and families in southern Italy had already lived through a German invasion, air bombardment, and surrender to the Allies.

And then at 16:30 on 18 March, Vesuvius erupted. The sky filled with violent explosions of rock and ash, and burning lava flowed down the slopes, devastating villages.

By the time it was over, 11 days later, 26 people had died and about 12,000 people were forced to leave their homes.

Angelina Formisano, who was nine, was among those evacuated from the village of San Sebastiano. She’s been speaking to Jane Wilkinson about being in the path of an erupting volcano.

(Photo: Vesuvius erupting in March 1944. Credit: Keystone/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and trust me you'll get there in a moment but if you're a comedy fan
0:05.2	I'd really like to tell you a bit about what we do. I'm Julie Mackenzie and I commission comedy
0:10.1	podcast at the BBC. It's a bit of a dream job really. Comedy is a bit of a dream job really.
0:13.0	Comedy is a fantastic joyous thing to do because really you're making people laugh,
0:18.0	making people's days a bit better, helping them process, all manner of things.
0:22.0	But you know, I also know that comedy is really
0:24.3	subjective and everyone has different tastes. So we've got a huge range of comedy on offer from
0:29.8	satire to silly, shocking to soothing, profound to just general pratting about.
0:35.0	So if you fancy a laugh, find your next comedy at BBC Sounds. Hello, welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Jane Wilkinson.
0:51.0	I'm taking you back to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy, not to the famous
0:57.4	flow of volcanic ash that buried Pompeii in 79 AD, but the last time the volcano erupted in 1944.
1:07.0	With a deadly insistence, the molten flow burns its way over land.
1:12.0	The same volcano which played on the ruins of ancient
1:15.1	Pompeii sends its insidious matter flowing again. The scorching mass burns and berries as it creeps
1:21.5	along its many gruesome powers.
1:24.0	British Patho, but before we talk about Vesuvius, it's World War II,
1:31.0	and families in southern Italy have already lived through a German invasion,
1:36.2	bombing raids and surrender to the allies.
1:39.5	If we're the Americans, we have the fascists and all us kids were clapping them because we couldn't understand.
1:50.0	And the next day we saw the Americans and we kept clapping because we still couldn't understand.
1:55.8	They were giving cigarettes to the men and candy and chocolates to us.
2:00.8	That's Angelina Formissano. In 1944 she was nine years old and living with her family in San Sebastiano, a village on the slopes of Vesuvius.
	...

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