Natural disaster As rescuers search for five more people, the government has declared a state of emergency on the island
A street on the island of Ischia, November 27, 2022. — Vincenzo Izzo//SIPA
The balance sheet increases dramatically at the end of the year. Ischia in Italy. The government proclaimed Sunday the state of emergency for this island in front of Naples, affected the day before by a large landslide caused by by heavy rains with the death toll now at seven.
“ Casamicciola is climbed to seven dead, while five are missing,” Sunday evening the prefect of Naples, Claudio Palomba.
“&Cedil produced nine years ago”
On site Sunday, more than 200 members of civil protection and law enforcement were still looking for the missing, while hundreds of volunteers, mud up to their knees, are busy trying to find the missing. clean the streets of the small town. Remains of cars and buses crushed by the violence of the mudslide and rocks are visible everywhere, in a ballet of diggers trying to find a way out. free access to homes, cars and shops. “The mountain came down, there was a devastation of shops, cars, hotels, and it was already gone. produced nine years ago. Now I’m cleaning up my mother-in-law’s store,” Salvatore Lorini, 45, a resident of Ischia where he was born.
“I am close to the people of the island of Ischia affected by a flood. I pray for the victims, for those who suffer and for all those who intervened in the rescue,” Pope Francis after the Angelus prayer.
Mass tourism pointed to finger
For Tommaso Moramarco, director of the Institute for Hydrogeological Research and Protection, quoted as by AGI agency, “””””” Ischia, there is an urbanization that has struck; and devastated the whole territory”. “When the island entered the period of mass tourism, the growth of infrastructure was slowed down. exponential, suffocating all the natural elements of the territory and covering everything with cement,” added geologist Mario Tozzi in the pages of the daily La Stampa, recalling the existence of tens of thousands of illegal constructions in Ischia.
The state of emergency is often declared in the peninsula, at following earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or severe weather. It provides for an accelerated procedure for mobilizing funds and resources, including those of civil protection, for urgent interventions or the establishment of reception structures.
Casamicciola Terme, a spa resort of 8,000 winter residents on the lush island of Ischia, near Capri, suffered an earthquake in 2017 that killed two people. She had been on the other hand completely destroyed by a much more powerful earthquake at the end of the 19th century.