In Pozzuoli, Campania, the earth was trembling. No, "it's dancing," according to sales representative Bruno Martino, 62. In a blue blazer, open shirt, moccasins and sunglasses, he was seated as if in a café under a tent that the Italian Civil Protection Service had erected on the seafront promenade. Behind him, below the parapet, a concrete slab welcomed a few retired women who had come to sunbathe early in the morning on their folding mattresses, amid the blue hum of a few Mediterranean ripples. The curve of the bay stretches from Cape Miseno in the west to the islet of Nisida in the east.

Here we were in the Naples metropolitan area, on the edge of a very special piece of land, the Phlegraean Fields, whose number of craters is comparable "to the surface of the moon," according to Warner Marzocchi, a professor of geophysics at the University of Naples Federico II. However, they have nothing to do with meteorite impacts. Taking its name from the Greek phlegraios, for "burning," the area is an immense volcano with multiple craters and a caldera, a depression hollowed out by a cyclopean explosion 35,000 years ago.

Deep in the earth, 10 kilometers below the surface, a reservoir of magma swells and then releases heat, causing the earth to "breathe." The ground rises and falls in a process known as "bradyseism," which causes the earth to shake – or dance.

Since the fall of 2023, geological events of this nature have become more frequent. On May 20, a magnitude 4.4 tremor caused chaos as residents took to the streets, got into their cars and congested escape routes beyond the authorities' control.

Sprawling embezzlement schemes

So, on this morning at the end of June, when the Civil Protection Department organized an evacuation exercise with the help of law enforcement and the fire department, Martino, the sales representative, was happy to take part as a "citizen" because he had to "learn how to behave if there was an eruption." The exercise involved an earthquake, but that didn't matter. Under the tent at the gathering point provided by the organizers, he nevertheless felt quite alone. The scenario being followed concerned a "restricted intervention zone," the one most at risk, inhabited by almost 34,000 people. In Pozzuoli, 250 residents registered. Only a few dozen locals took part. And in the seaside tent, there were 10 of them, surrounded by about 15 journalists. The local and national press had only one word to describe the whole affair: "a flop."

In Pozzuoli, between the land, its inhabitants and those who govern them, something is not quite right. The word most often used to describe this state of affairs is "mistrust." It's not clear what it is, but for many, behind all these preparatory exercises and all the measures for preventing risks from the depths, there's bound to be something fishy going on.

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