The mayor of a hilltop town on Sicily said “the situation is dire” after a powerful storm brought down a long section of hillside, leaving houses perched perilously on a cliff edge.
About 1,500 people have so far been evacuated from their homes because of the landslide, which began to show signs of movement on Sunday before developing a 4km-long front. The chasm continues to widen, raising fears it could swallow the town’s historic centre.
“This is a dramatic landslide,” Massimiliano Conti, the mayor of Niscemi, a town in the south of the island, said in a video on social media, while urging people living beyond the cordoned-off areas to “stay home”.
“I don’t want anyone to take this event lightly,” he added. “Fortunately there were no injuries, only damage to homes.”
Images and videos show homes on the verge of collapse. Salvatore Cocina, director general of Sicily’s civil protection authority, said on Monday night: “All homes within a 50-70 metre radius will collapse.”
Schools remained closed on Tuesday and a road connecting Niscemi with the coastal city of Gela has been closed.
Niscemi has a population of about 25,000. Many of those evacuated were staying with relatives, although hundreds have spent the past two nights sheltering in a local sports arena.
In an interview with La Repubblica published on Tuesday, Conti said: “There’s no denying it – we’re scared.”
He said the landslide had dropped by another 10 metres earlier on Tuesday morning. “And from aerial images, it was shocking to see our Niscemi collapsing,” he said. “The situation is dire, especially since the creaking continues, and the rain isn’t helping either the relief operations or the technical surveys.”
A serious concern is that the town could be cut off, added Conti. “We’re monitoring the situation non-stop, because the situation could change at any moment.”
The Italian government on Monday declared a state of emergency for southern regions battered by Cyclone Harry last week. The powerful storm brought relentless rain and waves as high as 9 metres, wreaking havoc in Sicily, Calabria and Sardinia as it destroyed roads and coastal defences, sweeping away beach resorts. The cost of the damage is estimated at more than €1bn (£870m).
The government has set aside an initial €100m to cover the immediate needs of the hardest hit areas. The civil protection minister, Nello Musumeci, said in a statement: “In the coming days, the government will adopt a new interministerial measure to allow the restoration and reconstruction of the damaged infrastructure.”
Sicily alone has suffered about €740m worth of damage, although the island’s president, Renato Schifani, warned the final amount could be double that.
