The Italian government declared a state of emergency on Sunday for the island of Ischia, opposite Naples (south), hit the day before by a large landslide that left one dead and a dozen missing.
A first emergency envelope of two million euros was also released at the end of this extraordinary government meeting necessary to proclaim a state of emergency, said Minister of Civil Protection Nello Musumeci.
The state of emergency is often declared in the peninsula, following earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or severe weather because it provides for an accelerated procedure for mobilizing funds and resources, including those for civil protection, for emergency interventions or setting up reception facilities.
Casamicciola Terme, a spa resort of 8,000 inhabitants in winter on the lush island of Ischia, near Capri, suffered an earthquake in 2017 that killed two people. It had, however, been completely destroyed by a much more powerful earthquake at the end of the 19th century.
On the spot, more than 200 members of the civil protection and the police are still looking for a dozen missing, while hundreds of volunteers, mud up to their knees, are busy cleaning 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 free up access to houses, cars and shops.
“It’s a situation that hurts us, if only for the people who disappeared under the mountain. Here it’s an island and even if we don’t all really know each other, that’s almost it, at least view,” Salvatore Lorini, 45, a resident of Ischia, where he was born, told AFP on the spot.
“The mountain came down, there was a devastation of shops, cars, hotels and that was already happening nine years ago. Now I’m cleaning up my mother-in-law’s shop,” said- he explained.
This shift was caused by the lack of maintenance and prevention “because nature is nature, there was the earthquake, but a little prevention” might have saved lives, according to Mr. Lorini who would like the establishment of a system similar to that of buoys warning of the arrival of a tsunami, but making it possible to tell the population that the earth is moving.