Italy's Etna is One Fiery Bastard!

Mount Etna is erupting again, and its hot lava fountains are illuminating the Sicilian sky.  The eruption began about a week ago, and Etna has since been spewing massive orange plumes of gas and thick clouds of ash.

Etna is Europe's most active volcano, and it erupts relatively often. The last major eruption was in 1992.  Its eruptions have rarely caused damage or injury in recent decades - and officials believe this eruption is no exception.  Stefano Branco, the head of the National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) in the nearby city of Catania, said: "We've seen worse."  I'd hate to see how bad it could be!

Associated Press Photos of the Year - Part 1

A road divides the Cerro Lagoon, where the water at right is colored and the Waltrading S.A. tannery stands on the bank, top right, in Limpio, Paraguay, on Aug. 5, 2020. According to Francisco Ferreira, a technician at the National University Multidisciplinary Lab, the color of the water is due to the presence of heavy metals like chromium, commonly used in the tannery process. (AP Photo/Jorge Saenz)

Motorists are ordered to the ground from their vehicle by police on May 31, 2020, during a protest in Minneapolis over the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee into his neck for several minutes. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Cemetery workers carry the coffin of a person who died of COVID-19 for burial at the Martires 19 de Julio cemetery in Comas, on the outskirts of Lima, Peru, on July 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Hoda Kinno, 11, is evacuated by her uncle Mustafa on Aug. 4, 2020, shortly after a massive explosion at the port in Beirut, Lebanon. The Kinno family from Syria's Aleppo region was devastated in the wake of the explosion — Hoda suffered a broken neck and other injuries and her sister Sedra, 15, died in the explosion. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)