Erupting Etna Shakes Sicily

(CBS)  A series of earthquakes shook the Mount Etna area Tuesday, sending panicked residents of nearby towns into the streets two days after the mountain's volcano erupted.

In the town of Santa Venerina, at the foot of the volcano, several people suffered minor injuries as they scrambled for safety, said Carmela Floreno, a civil defense official in nearby Catania.

Civil Defense headquarters in Rome said the largest earthquake had a preliminary reading of magnitude 4.4.

Authorities evacuated about 1,000 people from homes near the volcano as a precaution until buildings could be checked for structural damage, Floreno said. Residents were given refuge in tents and hotels.

As CBS News Correspondent Randall Pinkston reports, this was the eruption that wasn't supposed to happen. The people who live on the slopes of mount Etna had been expecting a period of calm after eruptions just last summer, but three days ago the volcano woke up with a vengeance.

Hardest hit was the ski resort of Linguaglossa, which means big tongue of lava. Today it was living up to its name.

There was nothing much local people could do. They tried building barriers to stop the lava flow. They even bombed it with water.

According to Pinkston, the church doors were left open last night so that worried villagers could pray to their patron saints.

Today for a few moments in one village, the church was the most dangerous place to be. An earthquake hit Santa Venerina, sending panicked residents into the streets afraid that the ancient church in the center of the village would collapse.

The huge plume of smoke was visible from space.

Citrus growers feared the blanket of ash damaged orange and lemon trees, and herders had to scramble to find forage for cattle on ash-covered fields.

The volcano erupted on Sunday, sending streams of lava down the mountain and causing ash to rain from the sky through Monday. The lava and ash activity was less intense Tuesday.

On Monday flights to Catania, with the only large airport in eastern Sicily, were diverted to Palermo, on the island's northwest, because ash hampered vision and left runways slippery.

Satellite photos showed ash drifted as far away as Libya, some 400 miles away. Lava flowed more than halfway down the sides of the 11,000-foot mountain, Europe's most active volcano.

In 1669, a huge volcanic eruption destroyed the city, on Sicily's eastern coast. Its last major eruption was in 1992.