section_path: Environmental issues/Natural hazards
section_name: Natural hazards
paragraph_text: Natural hazards
  
  The region has a variety of geological hazards, which have closely interacted with human activity and land use patterns. Among others, in the eastern Mediterranean, the Thera eruption, dated to the 17th or 16th century BC, caused a large tsunami that some experts hypothesise devastated the Minoan civilisation on the nearby island of Crete, further leading some to believe that this may have been the catastrophe that inspired the Atlantis legend. Mount Vesuvius is the only active volcano on the European mainland, while others, Mount Etna and Stromboli, are on neighbouring islands. The region around Vesuvius including the Phlegraean Fields Caldera west of Naples is quite active and constitute the most densely populated volcanic region in the world where an eruptive event may occur within decades.
  
  Vesuvius itself is regarded as quite dangerous due to a tendency towards explosive (Plinian) eruptions. It is best known for its eruption in AD 79 that led to the burying and destruction of the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
  
  The large experience of member states and regional authorities has led to exchange on the international level with the cooperation of NGOs, states, regional and municipality authorities and private persons. The Greek–Turkish earthquake diplomacy is a quite positive example of natural hazards leading to improved relations between traditional rivals in the region after earthquakes in İzmit and Athens in 1999. The European Union Solidarity Fund (EUSF) was set up to respond to major natural disasters and express European solidarity to disaster-stricken regions within all of Europe. The largest amount of funding requests in the EU relates to forest fires, followed by floods and earthquakes. Forest fires, whether human-made or natural, are a frequent and dangerous hazard in the Mediterranean region. Tsunamis are also an often-underestimated hazard in the region. For example, the 1908 Messina earthquake and tsunami took more than 123,000 lives in Sicily and Calabria and were among the deadliest natural disasters in modern Europe.