A 15-year-old girl, swept out to sea with the bus on which she was travelling, was killed yesterday as a mudslide hit the town of Casamicciola Terme, Ischia, just thirty-nine days after the mudslide disaster at Messina.
An 11-year-old girl and another person may be missing, ANSA reports. Eleven people have been admitted to hospital, one of them a child who is in a serious condition. Rescue workers managed to pull fifteen people out of the mud, including a 6-year-old child who at first was thought to have been missing and the child who is in hospital
At around 8.30 yesterday morning torrential rain caused mud to pour down upon the town from Monte Epomeo, Ischia’s highest peak. “It was like the end of the world”, said the Mayor, Vincenzo D’Ambrosio, who had been taking his children to school. The town had to be evacuated by boat as roads were blocked by mud and debris. About fifty cars were submerged in mud but fortunately many of these were parked and empty.
In 2006 two hundred and fifty people were evacuated from their homes on Ischia following a mudslide from Monte Vezzi. On that occasion a father and his three daughters were killed whilst his wife and young baby survived.
The Mayor of Casamicciola says that the island is a geological risk area. The President of the Campania Geological Association, Francesco Russo, has stated that the mudslide was caused by the inordinate amount of rain which fell into the riverbed, eroding some of the volcanic rock from which it is formed. Therefore the channel could not contain the mud.
