TWENTY TWO people have died, 40 are still missing and a further 95 have been hospitalised following the mudslide which devastated three small villages just south of the Sicilian port of Messina, Sicily last Friday.
Even as prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was confirming these figures in a news conference held after he had visited the afflicted areas yesterday, environmentalists and media commentators were asking just how such a thoroughly predictable tragedy could happen yet again in today’s Italy.
The symbol of this latest Italian “natural” disaster is a five-floor apartment block built in a dried-up river bed in the hamlet of Scaletta Zanclea. When Guido Bortolaso, head of Italy’s Protezione Civile, the agency which handles natural disasters, arrived in Scaletta Zanclea last Friday, he did not mince his words: “Just look at this, people have built right in the river bed. What can you expect? The water will flow down and if houses have been built where they should not be, then this is the result.”
The view that illegal building might have played a major role in a disaster that increasingly looks more man-made than natural was echoed by state president Giorgio Napolitano, who said: “What Bertolaso says is absolutely right. In Messina and many other parts of Italy, we have a situation of widespread geological instability caused at least in part by illegal building.
“Either we activate a serious, long-term plan that guarantees safety, rather than investing in multimillion euro projects, or these parts of the country will continue to be at risk of such disasters.”
Italy experiences some sort of land movement every 45 minutes, while, on average, seven people die every month because of landslides. Between 1918 and 2009, Italy experienced 15,000 serious mudslides, including those in Monte Toc al Vajont (1963), Ancona (1982), La Valtellina (1987) and Sarno (1998). Even the village of Giampilieri, one of those worst afflicted on Friday, experienced a similar mudslide two years ago, when no one was injured.
Little wonder that environmentalist groups such as Legambiente argue that local authorities can hardly claim that they have been struck by an unexpected natural phenomenon. Little wonder, too, that Messina state prosecutor Guido Lo Forte has opened an investigation into possible penal or criminal responsibilities related to Friday’s disaster.