In thirty years there have been seven mayors, three extraordinary commissioners, nine governors and sixteen governments. But no one apparently worried about the Niscemi landslide. It was known that the country rested on unstable ground and that with the rains there was the risk that everything would collapse, but over the years, mayors, commissioners, governors and governments have addressed the problem.
It was 1997, and Romano Prodi was at Palazzo Chigi, when the hill began to collapse. However, after promises of rapid interventions and some buffer measures to stabilize the ground, everything remained as before. Until the rainfall last January. In a short time, 45 mm of water fell, less than half that of 1997. But it was enough for a piece of the town to crumble. Now that there are 1,500 displaced people, and others could be added, everyone is protesting and promising, but the reality is that people should leave there, because those houses are at risk, because the center should be rebuilt elsewhere, because if the houses are built on a landslide it is impossible to keep them standing. Easy to say, hard to do. Who suggests to the inhabitants of the village overlooking the Gela plain, in the province of Caltanissetta, that their homes, where they have memories and affections, those four walls costing effort and sacrifices, should be abandoned? Nobody. And in fact that is what happened and what perhaps will happen. Minister Nello Musumeci claims that nature sooner or later presents the bill. Unpleasant to hear, but it’s the reality to deal with.
For more than two hundred years it has been known that Niscemi rests on quicksand, but for more than two hundred years everyone has pretended nothing happened, in the hope that there won’t be a tragedy. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies didn’t even exist when, as the director of meteoweb.eu, Giuseppe Cariddi, discovered, a book was published that reconstructed the “revolution” that occurred in March 1790 in the lands near S. Maria di Niscemi: “The side opposite the slope of the mountain rose in a plane and joined the lowered slope with the other side, forming the two inclined planes that can now be seen.” So it has been known for 236 years that the land there is fragile and that the houses built there can be swallowed up. But, as often happens, nothing happened. How many Niscemi are there in Italy? To how many people should it be explained that their home rests on a volcano, on a landslide, on land at risk of flooding? There is no precise data, but every disaster is the same as another and originates from failure to intervene, from neglect, from sloth. Do you remember when in Casteldaccia, eastern Sicily, the flood took away nine people? The house in which they slept was invaded by water: it had been built too close to the river. And the Casamicciola landslide, in Ischia? An entire ridge collapsed and a mass of debris overwhelmed homes and families, causing twelve victims.
There are many massacres announced, too many tragedies due to the inefficiency of politics, bureaucracy and the judiciary, which, as we know, always arrives at the end, once the disaster is over. Every now and then someone talks about prevention and measures to be taken to avoid catastrophes. But in many cases, evictions are more important than consolidation works. Around Vesuvius, homes are a risk, period. And so are the settlements in the Campi Flegrei area. But who tells the inhabitants? Which mayors, commissioners, regional presidents and ministers have the courage to explain to thousands of people that they have to leave their homes because those four walls risk becoming a tomb? It’s true: nature always presents the bill, but we are not even able to evict the tenants of illegal homes, let alone make those who built the fireplace respecting the law understand that there is a law superior to that of the State which responds to natural phenomena that no mayor, no commissioner and not even the President of the Region or the head of the government can harness. Of course, there are public resources that we don’t spend because politics and bureaucracy are incapable of investing them. We do little prevention and little maintenance. But if environmentalists, instead of spending their time chatting about CO2, committed themselves to mapping those areas that must be returned to nature, because the strength of nature is superior to that of man, perhaps we would avoid other Niscemis and more pain for those who see their homes and their history collapse.
