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RESCUERS WORKED TO free the body of a pregnant nurse from the rubble of collapsed buildings in Sicily today, after a massive explosion which killed at least seven people.
The blast, likely caused by a gas leak, tore through four residential buildings late Saturday in the southern town of Ravanusa, with one survivor describing it “as if a bomb had gone off”.
The search “continues unabated” for two more people missing after the disaster, firefighters said.
A photograph on the firefighters’ Twitter account showed them standing amid the rubble, as “a fresh day of searching painfully begins”.
The blast levelled four structures, including a four-storey apartment building, in the central residential district of the town of nearly 11,000 inhabitants, according to Italy’s civil protection agency.
Images from the scene showed a mass of concrete rubble, wooden beams and mangled steel in a large empty space, with neighbouring buildings charred and damaged.
The victims included nurse Selene Pascariello, 30, who was nine months pregnant, and who had been due to give birth next week, according to the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
Pascariello’s body was found alongside that of her husband Giuseppe Carmina, and his parents. The couple had been visiting the soon-to-be grandparents on the third floor of their building.
The family had known well one of the first victims to be found, retired high-school teacher Pietro Carmina, who had recently recovered from a life-threatening case of coronavirus, it said.
Two women were recovered alive from the debris early on Sunday after being found by sniffer dogs, but rescuers have not heard further signs of life.
An investigation has been opened into the cause of the explosion, which authorities said was most probably a gas leak.
Local resident Calogero Bonanno said “neighbours had told me there was a smell of gas”.
“I heard a tremendous roar, as if a bomb had gone off or a plane had crashed into the house,” he was cited as saying by Italian media.
“Then the window frames exploded. We immediately went down to the street, there was fire everywhere, rubble all around,” he said after fleeing along with his wife, three children and in-laws.
“It’s a miracle we’re alive”.
Natural gas distributor Italgas said in a statement it had received no reports of gas leaks in the week leading up to the incident.
No construction work was underway in the section of pipeline affected in the blast and the town’s distribution network was fully inspected in both 2020 and 2021, it said.
The Repubblica daily said the town’s gas pipelines – installed 36 years ago – were among the oldest in Italy, and ran through unstable ground, susceptible to soil erosion and landslides.
Sicily, one of Italy’s poorest regions, suffers from sub-standard and ageing infrastructure.
Many homes and other structures constructed in past decades were built using cheap, sub-par materials that make them more prone to collapse, often because of interference in building contracts by the Mafia.
© AFP 2021
They don’t build things there like the Romans did to last for millenia.
@Tim McCormack29: Not when the Mafia is building it.
@Pat Lonergan: smug and ignorant comment, some knowledge of topography rather than Netflix would be a plus.
Never happened before……must be climate change,
@Eugene Conroy: comment deleted for stating climate has been changing since year dot !!!
@SF Knee Knockers: two words! “Happening faster”. Try and keep up.
@Paul Furey: faster than what…earth billions of years old..human records only for a few 100 years…climate has been changing forever.. faster slower faster.
Ligurian infrastructure is in such a state. No area of europe has suffered so much with bridge collapses despite the fact that they pay the highest road tolls in Europe, and most of the motorways there consist vastly of viaducts like this, which were said to have been audited after the last collapse.
@.: it’s probably the most corrupt country in the Europe. Millions of EU grant money has just disappeared into black holes and is untraceable.
@Conoroconnor: I read about how mafia ran most of the construction in certain parts of Italy. Never had any competition so they where awarded all the civil contracts.
@Conoroconnor: as an Italian myself I am afraid I have to agree. Left Italy decades ago but very little seems to have changed and corruption seems still incredibly widespread
@Robbie Clancy: No5nonly that but they provided sub-standard concrete and Steele to state projects and in turn bribed construction standards authority overseers to turn a blind eye. Modern Italy is crumbling. The motorways are the worst in western Europe.
@Attilio: the thing is, I love italy. A truly beautiful country with some of the most unspoiled countryside, incredible old walled towns, lovely people and the best food in the world. Such a shame.
@Conoroconnor: well then jump in your Ferrari and enjoy some of the best roads, best scenery, best food by a mile, wine and best people. I’m not Italian but I have family there and I dislike it being disparaged despite it being 10 times the country ours is.
@Mike McGann: most of my italian friends would agree with my assessment of the corruption. Like I said, it’s a pity because it is otherwise such a great country & great people I’m not saying we are that much better, by the way. but I spoke with people in Apulia who were in awe of how Ireland has used it’s a EU Grant’s for redevelopment over the years, as over there the money just disappears with little or no obvious development having taken place. The mechanisms of the Italian state have also taken bureaucracy to a whole new level. These are the faults with the place, but I really love Italy and its people. In many ways, public transport for example, ithey way ahead of us. By the way, I go cycling there once a year and their smaller roads are in as bad of condition as ours, if not worse.
@Conoroconnor: Great country. I’m regularly there. Was only there last week. I’m I correct in saying this road from Genoa to Ventimiglia was constructed not long after WW2 originally. Are some of these structures from the 50s & 60s?
For those putting this down to poor Italian infrastructure, this is also happening in the French Alps where least 2 people have died. There is an unprecedented level of flooding happening. Put this together with Venice recently and parts of England that experienced an absolute monumental deluge, and you have a pattern of highly unusual weather events that are fully predicted by climate change.
https://amp.breakingnews.ie/world/two-dead-as-floods-hit-france-and-italy-966261.html
@Paraic: You must be racking up the brownie points with Cookie and Dana at Skeppie Science.
@Tommy Roche: How many troll accounts is it now that you’ve racked up?
better get used to it whatever the reason the climate is a changing.
Made with mafia Concrete!!!!!!
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