Poignant accounts have emerged of the final moments of victims of a landslide that hit the Italian island of Ischia on Saturday and one of them is that of a father of a woman in her 30s who told how she called him for help when the ground began to “crack” on the hill above her, but he was unable to save her.
Her body was one of four found by rescuers, but at least nine people are still missing on the island near Naples.
It is about an event where the “river of mud and debris” destroyed houses and “took” cars into the sea.
This followed days of rain in southern Italy, but now that the weather has improved, the scale of the devastation is becoming clear.
More than 100 firefighters, as well as divers and ground units, have been deployed to Ischia to try to clear the streets of debris.
Like nearby Capri, Ischia, on the Tyrrhenian Sea, is a holiday destination for foreigners and Italians alike.
Nello Musumeci, the civil defense minister, told Il Messaggero newspaper that Italy needed a “national climate change adaptation plan” to ensure that buildings and infrastructure can withstand increasingly frequent phenomena such as heavy rainfall. .
The government has approved a state of emergency, allocating an initial sum of 2 million euros to help rebuild homes.