The displaced persons in the red zone of Casamicciola will have to spend at least a second night outside their homes, after the extension of the weather alert until 4pm on Sunday.
But what seemed like a difficult mission - to simultaneously remove hundreds of people from their homes along the small roads of the island - ended yesterday with a substantially positive balance.
"A difficult job well done", comments the civil protection commissioner
Giovanni Legnini
.
Today the rain has given a break, in the next few hours it could be worse but the hope is that the alarm will stop tomorrow afternoon.
Since last night, 417 people have found hospitality in hotels, including those already displaced immediately after the flood.
The estimated residents in the red zone exceed a thousand, therefore it is estimated that around 600 have found independent accommodation.
As many as 54 families, about 150 people, did not want to leave the area at risk yesterday evening.
The eviction order is not compulsory, so the traffic police continued their door-to-door work of information and persuasion: about forty families were convinced to leave,
a nucleus of irreducible remains - especially the elderly - who have no intention to leave their homes
.
"We haven't moved even after the 2017 earthquake. It doesn't rain much now, we feel safe, the worst is over", they say to those who ask them if they feel calm.
Casamicciola is therefore preparing for a second night of waiting and a possible emergency.
The civil protection machine started off yesterday with an additional difficulty, given that the weather alert went off a few hours earlier than expected, forcing everyone into a race against time.
For Legnini "the operation was successful overall. Were there difficulties, mistakes, weren't everyone reached by communication? It was inevitable, due to the shortage of times".
In the hotels, everyone found rooms and a hot meal
, in some cases even prepared by a starred chef, Nino Di Costanzo, who offered 130 guests of the Michelangelo hotel a menu of typical dishes with a final babà.
In the other hotels, instead, the meals prepared by the volunteers coordinated by Caritas arrived, amid the appreciation of those who had had to leave their homes.
Even tonight the red zone will be patrolled by the police, to avoid episodes of looting.
In addition to managing the alert, Commissioner Legnini is working on other emergencies.
First of all the removal of the mud and debris flow, then the monitoring of the fronts at risk on Mount Epomeo, the restoration of services and the reopening of the schools: barring further unforeseen events, the primary schools will resume on Monday, the high schools on Wednesday.
The commissioner signed his first ordinance to identify those responsible for priority interventions.
Casamicciola is the epicenter of the hydrogeological instability, but in Ischia there are various open fronts: in Lacco Ameno and Serrara Fontana, homes at risk have been cleared, while the road to Maronti beach was today blocked by a landslide caused by the subsidence of a water pipeline.
In the meantime, the respite from the bad weather made it possible to resume the
search for 31-year-old Maria Teresa Arcamone
, the last person missing beyond the 11 victims already recovered.
The young woman worked as a bartender, she left the house at five in the morning and it is assumed she was overwhelmed by the mud while she was on the street.
Today her car was recovered, a Fiat Panda, but still no trace of her body.