Word: lava
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...William Arthur Morgan, head of the three-man mission, rolled up his sleeves and went to work. He had no facilities for making blood counts or fancy tests. But Dr. Morgan looked at the children's lava-toughened feet, figured that if their hearts could stand running up & down the islands' volcanic hills they could take an anesthetic. There was no sterilizing equipment, so Dr. Morgan operated barehanded, soaking his hands in alcohol between operations. The first day he performed 36 tonsillectomies, the next two days, 27 more apiece. The young patients, some only two years old, were...
...night Allied military trucks chugged up the mountainside, began the evacuation of some 17,000 people. From San Sebastiano, Massi di Somma and Cercola, the homeless and their meager belongings were carted downslope to emergency shelter and food. In the lava-lit darkness, while grimy soldiers struggled to unsnarl traffic, an air raid alarm sounded. Men doused lights, but Vesuvius paid no heed...
Children sobbed. Women stretched their hands to heaven. Men raced against the scorching lava to salvage rows of vegetables; they shook their heads dolefully, muttered: "Guerra, fame, distruzione" (War, hunger, destruction.) Priests prayed, paraded the image of St. Gennaro, the Neapolitans' legendary protector, who in the days of Roman persecution passed through a fiery furnace unharmed...
...sized Professor Giuseppe Imbo, director of the Vesuvian Royal Observatory and foremost authority on the volcano, clung to his tiny workshop halfway up the mountain. Through four days & nights he scarcely ate, barely slept or washed. Alone he crept to the boiling crater's edge, closely charted the lava flow, checked his seismograph by kerosene lamp...
Frightened folk below forgot all about the professor until he jounced four miles downslope to tell Allied officials that the lava flow had slackened, evacuation could be halted. Then, anxious to get back to his instrument readings, he hurried upslope again, this time provided with a car. Behind him he left word that Vesuvius had not put on a better show since 1872, when showers of stone killed 20. (By week's end the present eruption had caused 26 deaths.) But the little geophysicist was also sure that the show was "effusive" and not "explosive"; he had been much...