"I'm here in the rescue area in Casamicciola, I looked for the missing and I saw a victim, it was a woman".
This was told to ANSA by Don Gino Ballirano, parish priest of the church of Santa Maria Maddalena, in the municipality of Ischia, who has been in the streets of the area destroyed by the landslide since this morning to comfort people and look for families with whom he has not been able to get in touch .
"The telephone does not work well - explains the priest - the lines have been damaged, but I met many people I was looking for on the street. We are experiencing very difficult moments, of enormous anxiety for an area that has already been hit by disasters in recent years And now there is also a certain victim, a woman whose face I saw while they were carrying her, but I didn't recognize her, she was disfigured".
Don Gino is experiencing a new tragedy on the street after the 2017 earthquake that killed two people and the 2009 flood in which a 15-year-old girl died: "I have spoken to many inhabitants - he explains - they are in the area. Everyone is still experiencing a tragedy after those that Casamicciola has already experienced with another more contained flood than today's, then followed by the earthquake. The citizens are destroyed, discouraged and subjected to continuous tragedies. I met the families I was looking for because they managed to get off the side Alta di Casamicciola, from via Celario, the area most affected by the landslide. They came down a nineteenth-century road that remained unscathed, the forces of order made a chain to help people. Now the last families still stranded are coming down. The difficulty is walking downhill,in the middle of the mud".
The parish priest is on the street because his church, like the others on the island, are closed due to bad weather warnings: "There was an ordinance from the mayors - he explains - which ordered not to open the churches to push people to go out at home at times when you need to stay safe. Masses are suspended, but now they are on the street, because you need to be close to the citizens who are afraid. To reach the Piazza Maio area, I came on foot, in the main street of Casamicciola le cars overturned by the landslide have created a wall, while on the other road the retaining walls towards the countryside have collapsed. Now the roads are gradually being cleared but this morning the debris from the hill arrived at the port, Casamicciola was split in two".
(HANDLE).
