ROME (Reuters) - A Sicilian town is struggling to work out why dozens of household items from fridge-freezers to furniture keep mysteriously bursting into flames, terrifying locals and sparking theories of demonic intervention.

Since mid-January dozens of electrical goods and pieces of furniture have spontaneously gone up in flames, causing huge damage in Canneto di Caronia, a small town perched on the Mediterranean island's rocky coast.

"I've seen unplugged electrical cables burst into flames with my own eyes, but I just can't explain it," a local policeman who did not want to be named said Wednesday. "I've never seen anything like it."
. . .

Italian utility Enel tried cutting power to the town after the first reports but the fires continued. With experts no closer to explaining the phenomenon, theories ranged from arson to a freak power surge or even the supernatural.
. . .

Map of Sicily Showing Location of Canneto di Caronia
"Appropriated" from http://www.sicilian.net/maps/.

(In-depth story in Italian - Added 13 Feb 2004.)
Il paese assediato dal fuoco misterioso

(The following article and comment were added on 14 March 2004.)
A Canneto di Caronia (ME)

In this last article a researcher dismisses supernatural involvement (the Devil) and fraud, and goes on to suggest some natural phenomena which may ultimately explain the fires. The article is written in Italian, but if you go to google.com™ and use the search stream A Canneto di Caronia (ME), it should pop up as the first listing. By using Google's translation option you can get a fair gist of the ideas discussed. The web page also has several good links to more aspects of the Canneto fires problem. The aerial photo of Canneto below came from one of the linked pages. (Translation note: "Canneto" means "cane field" in Italian.)

The following graph is from this site's webpage USA Influenza Activity, 2003-2004, Part 1.

According to the Kite-Acheson hypothesis, the January spikes of solar wind protons should have induced a large positive electrical charge on the surface of the Earth. That electrical charge should eventually have flowed through the Earth and tended to concentrate on mountain tops and cliff lines. (The description of Canneto di Caronia seems to match the latter physical setting. The author may have read too much into Reuters' phrase " . . . perched on the Mediterranean island's rocky coast." It was taken to mean atop a cliff line.) If there were to be a large concentration of electrical charge in an area, and at the same time there was extra low relative humidity, (Sicily is known to normally have low humidity.) one might then expect household dust(*) to become charged and to become airborne due to its electrostatic repulsion by the charged Earth. (The dust and Earth would both be charged positively in this case.) Airborne dust in the proper concentrations can be explosive. (Grain elevator fires come to mind.)

(*)Volcanic ash is flammable. When was the last time Mt. Etna's plume deposited ash on Canneto di Caronia? [Added 14 Feb 2004. According to a Canneto source, that event occurred in about February of 2003. See the 21 Feb Update.]

Appliances generally make electrical sparks when turning on or off. Furniture, constructed with iron or steel parts which have some freedom of movement (open bottomed box-spring beds, and sofas, for example) may produce sparks when the metal parts scrape or rub each other.

Sparks combined with explosive dust concentrations may be the primary sources of the fireworks. A household appliance, with its power cord unplugged, if it is resting on an electrically insulating surface, . . . can become electrically charged like a capacitor and then arc discharge through its power plug if it becomes close enough to an electrical ground. [Reworded on 15 Feb 2004.]

Daily average precipitation and humidity data recorded at a weather station near Catania on the East coast of Sicily (Shown as "WX Sta." on map above.) for the period of 10-20 Jan 2004 were as follows. (Catania is about 45 miles Southeast of Canneto di Caronia. See map above.) [Re-worded on 15 Feb 2004.]

10th no precip 68%
11th no precip 61%*
12th no precip 72%
13th no precip 76%
14th no precip 74%
15th no precip 62%*
16th no precip 69%
17th no precip 90%
18th no precip 87%
19th no precip 85%
20th no precip 80%

*The 11th and the 15th of January were the driest days during this period. These dates should be compared to the times when the fires at Canneto di Caronia were most prevalent.

Any reader knowing of a source of archived weather information from the north coast of Sicily, especially from a location close to the town of Canneto di Caronia, is invited to contact Shade Tree Physics at the e-mail address at the bottom of this article.

Space Image of Sicily Showing Mt. Etna Plume

17 Feb 2004 - Author's Notes
The author speculates that the Etna volcanic ash episode took place in the fall of 2003(*). It would have occurred when the weather on Sicily was still warm enough for people who live in un-airconditioned houses to have their windows open (for cooling) a large part of the time. The ash involved in the fires probably was that which settled under hard to get to places, like under refrigerators, beds, sofas, etc. One recent story covering the fires, in fact, mentions fires associated with these mentioned items.
(*)Thanks to Jeroen Goulooze for catching the "2004" boo boo.

The incidents of non-electrically energized appliances bursting into flames would tend to have occurred in houses located closest to the sea, which would be on the South side of the main street. The idea here is that Earth's electrical field gradients would be most non-linear near a rocky drop-off to the sea. (This needs a bit more work.)

Needed information: How high above sea level is the main street in Canneto di Caronia? Is the town "perched" on a cliff-like structure? {These answers have been supplied.]

21 Feb 2004 - Update
A friend of the author who lives in Perugia Italy, phoned the staff of the Hotel Za' Maria in Canneto di Caronia and reports the following info. (A follow-up call to the hotel by the author provided some amplifying information which will be enclosed in parentheses. Thanks to the hotel staff for providing an English speaking interpreter.)

The elevation of Canneto di Caronia is very near to that of sea level. The village itself is NOT on a cliff. (There is a beach between the village and the sea.)

Nearby there is a 300 meter high cliff with another small village. (The cliff is located some 300-500 meters inland [South] of Canneto.)

Ashes from Mt. Etna were deposited on Canneto di Caronia about a year earlier than February 2004].

The hotel staff contact person informed my friend that "by now all the phenomena seem reducing." [seem to have abated].

Readers who have been in the area, or who have additional information related to the topics under discussion, are invited to contact the author to help bring the phenomenon into better focus. Pictures would be very helpful. An aerial photo showing Canneto di Caronia with the nearby cliff would be most helpful. [Got one! 14 Mar 2004.]

According to a 10 February 2004 Guardian Newspaper report the houses in which the fires had broken out were all in an area 350 metres (about 380 yards) by 70 metres between the shoreline and a railway. [Added 13 March 2004.]

Nicholas Hawkins, who visited the area on about 8 March, says that the "cliffs" south of (inland from) Canneto di Caronia, are in fact, steeply rising rock, and not vertical. (What is the name of the village on top of the "cliffs?") [Added 13 March 2004.]

[Diagram added 13 Mar 2004. Latest update 05 Aug 2006.]

Click on the Google Earth Space Photo of Canneto di Caronia to see the actual Canneto area. [Added 27 July 2006.]

24 Feb 2004
We do not have to limit our considerations to Mt. Etna as a possible source of recently deposited volcanic ash at Canneto di Caronia. The photo below shows ash erupting from Mt. Stromboli which is the northeasternmost of the Aeolian islands, located some 55 nautical miles northeast of Canneto di Caronia.

Ash Erupting from Crater 1, Stromboli

© J. Alean

See the NOAA Air Resources Laboratory Volcanic Ash Forecast Transport and Dispersion (VAFTAD) web page. Web site provides ash dispersal modelling volcanoes around the world based on current meteorological conditions. [Added 25 Feb 2004.]

25 Feb 2004 - Volcanic Ash Electrical Discharges
According to a webpage by the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences, Ltd., titled Volcanic hazards in New Zealand, [Volcanic] "Ash clouds can generate powerful electrical fields producing intense and frequent lightning discharges, which can interfere with radio communications and damage electrical installations, or start fires in buildings and installations."

The above statement apparently pertains to large-scale atmospheric electrical activity but the events at Canneto di Caronia may represent small scale versions of the process. (Whether or not volcanic ash was a factor in the Canneto fires is yet to be determined.) The author solicits inputs from individuals who have done experiments on small-scale electrical discharges (micro-lightning?) by volcanic ash, or who can provide anecdotal evidence that the phenomenon occurs.