Bad weather in the South, damage worth 2 billion. State of emergency and first resources to be submitted to the Cdm on Monday

Incalculable, however, are the damages: beaches wiped out, coastal roads destroyed, marinas devastated, bathing establishments swept away, shops and accommodation facilities damaged by the fury of the swell with waves as high as a four-storey building. The count is still ongoing, but a total ofat least EUR 2 billion is estimated. The Council of Ministers will meet next week, waiting to receive the complete documentation from the regions and appoint the governors as commissioners for the emergency.

"After a summary instruction by the Department, we will propose the request for the declaration of a state of national emergency together with the resolution of an initial resource that will allow local authorities to proceed with the first interventions such as restoring the road network and removing obstacles," announced the Minister of Civil Protection Nello Musumeci who yesterday morning carried out an inspection in Sicily, in Santa Teresa Riva (Messina) and Ognina-Catania, which were violently hit.

In Catanzaro to ascertain for himself the disaster in the Lido district caused by a violent sea storm, the head of the Civil Protection Fabio Ciciliano expressed 'pride' because 'we have had no casualties, no dead and no injured in an event that has devastated southern Italy with an impact on the territories that is there for all to see. The first goal that a mature civil protection system must achieve,' he reiterated, 'is to safeguard human life, everything else comes later. Important, but it comes later'. Now, however, he adds, 'it is necessary to put everything back on its feet immediately and resolve the damage because the summer season is just around the corner on the splendid coasts of Calabria, Sicily and Sardinia, where the tourist vocation is very high'.

For the president of the Region of Sardinia Alessandra Todde, who has declared a state of emergency, "we are talking about hundreds of millions for infrastructural damage and also damage to cultural and environmental heritage: this is not a situation in which we must react with our gut, we must react seriously". In Sicily too, the governor Renato Schifan has convened an extraordinary meeting of the Council, which has approved an initial allocation of 70 million euro in regional funds. And he has initiated talks to verify the possibility of accessing the EU solidarity fund and reprogramming some Fsc resources to be allocated to post-cyclone interventions, reassuring the entrepreneurs who have lost everything: "We will not leave you alone.

For phase 2, that of reconstruction, Schifani looks favourably on the hypothesis of the appointment by the Cdm of a commissioner to speed up spending, a possibility provided for by law. According to Confcooperative Fedagripesca, between boats, infrastructures and lost earnings, the damage to the sector could reach 40 million euros. "Urgent action is needed to make fishing ports safe, as they suffer from structural and chronic criticalities, to prevent them from silting up with every sea storm, and events like these make it more urgent than ever to refinance the solidarity fund for the sector, which currently lacks economic resources," says Paolo Tiozzo, vice-president of Confcooperative Fedagripesca.