| Situation Update No. 1 Ref.no.: LS-20100216-24959-ITA
Situation Update No. 1
On 2010-02-17 at 04:31:23 [UTC]
Event: Landslide
Location: Italy Calabria Maierato Number of Evacuated: 2000 person(s)
Situation: Residents of a southern Italy town were evacuated on Tuesday following a dangerous landslide which brought down an entire hillside, state media reported. During the weekend the area around Maierato, a town in the Calabria region near the Tyrrhenian coast, had been hit by heavy rainfall. So far a total of 2,300 residents have been evacuated by the authorities, according to state television Rai that broadcast an impressive amateur video of the landslide, showing people escaping and the hillside coming down and burying the town under debris and mud. Mayor Sergio Rizzo described the scene as "apocalyptic." However, no deaths or injuries have been reported. In recent days the entire region has been severely affected by mudslides. Towns around Cosenza have also been evacuated this week due to floods which destroyed a water main on Monday, leaving thousands of homes without tap water. In October a mudslide in the Sicilian city of Messina killed 37 people and left more than 700 homeless. Another landslide struck in November the island of Ischia, killing one person and damaging buildings. Many Italian small towns, especially in the south, have been built with no sound criteria and are thus insecure. According to the civil and environmental protection agency, 70 percent of Italian communities are threatened by water damage, enhanced by abuses, deforestation and unplanned building. The Italian environmental group Legambiente said on Tuesday that every town and city in Calabria has areas at flood risk due to widespread unregulated building and inadequate water drainage systems. The study estimated that 60 percent of the towns are at high flood risk for heavy industry. As many as a quarter reported hospitals, schools and hotels in the area are also subject to flooding threats. Following the Messina disaster in October, civil protection chief Guido Bertolaso called for a nationwide strategic plan to safeguard areas at risk of natural calamities. Bertolaso said that illegal building and inadequate flood prevention measures bore much of the blame for the tragedies striking Italy. The impacts of the floods, according to the civil protection chief, were "predictable" just like those of the earthquake that hit L'Aquila in April and caused more than 300 deaths, where many houses had been constructed with no legal standards and procedures. His appeal for a national anti-calamity plan was later backed by President Giorgio Napolitano, who warned that failure to upgrade the country's infrastructure would result in more deaths in the future. |
