The fire does not loosen its grip in Sicily, fueled by the hot wind and by the temperatures that in some areas of the island reach 40 degrees.
And to deal with the fire, aid will arrive from other regions after the Civil Protection, following the request of the Palazzo dei Normanni for national support, has mobilized other ground teams and arranged for the doubling of the shifts of the brigades involved.
The controversies are also raging. The head of the Civil Protection Curcio reminded the president of the Musumeci Region, after his request to the government of the state of mobilization, that "the responsibilities in the context of what is done against forest fires are clear: the rules provide that the fight active both within the competence of the Regions, and the active fight is not only extinguishing, but also surveillance, sighting ". "The state is responsible for coordinating the air competition when the regions are unable to intervene with their own means", says Fabrizio Curcio. The CGIL points the finger at the lack of staff of the firefighters and the emergencies that they would not be able to cope with due to "precise and clear political responsibilities". And the leader of the Democratic Party atSicilian Assembly Giuseppe Lupo adds to the dose: "Sicily is burning, but what has the regional government done to prevent this disaster?".
Negligence, favorable climatic conditions, a butt thrown at the side of the road, 'spotting' phenomena but above all the hand of man and willful misconduct are the causes of the fires that have been burning throughout the island and in Calabria for days. where the mayor of Reggio made the request for a state of calamity.
From Palermo to Catania there are still dozens of interventions by the firefighters, forestry, aircraft, civil protection to extinguish fires that have raised a very high column of smoke that even NASA has photographed from a satellite. Polizzi Generosa, Monreale, Petralia Soprana, Scillato, Misilmeri are some of the places where they are trying to stop the fire front. In the Catanese area, due to a fire along the slopes at the edge of the roadway, the state road 417 "di Caltagirone" was temporarily closed to traffic in both directions in Belpasso.
In the Etna capital only this morning some outbreaks that were still active in the Ionian belt were extinguished, between San Francesco la rena and Vaccarizzo after the fires that last night, in a city burned by the African heat and fed by strong wind, destroyed the bathhouse 'Le capannine' is forced to evacuate about 200 people by sea and to close the Fontanarossa airport for a few hours. Today a total of 115 requests for assistance were registered throughout the province. The affected areas were generally those already devastated by the flames but new fires broke out between Adrano, Belpasso and Santa Maria di Licodia.
According to the firefighters, engaged in 24 hours in 800 interventions throughout Italy of which 250 in Sicily alone, the climatic conditions of these hours were the "perfect" ones to favor an uncontrolled spread of the fires.
