Ciciliano: in Niscemi the whole hill is collapsing. Schlein: a billion from the bridge to the emergency, now

National civil protection chief Fabio Ciciliano, together with the president of the Sicilian region, Renato Schifani, concluded an aerial inspection of the landslide area in Niscemi in the province of Caltanissetta. 'The whole hill is collapsing on the Gela plain,' Ciciliano said as soon as he arrived at the municipal operations centre.

The landslide has rendered dozens of properties uninhabitable, forcing the creation of a red zone up to 150 metres from the beginning of the 'detachment niche', i.e., from the paved area that has not collapsed. "The situation is particularly complex after an initial inspection we made, and it must be said that even intact houses overlooking the edge of the landslide can no longer be inhabited," Ciciliano concluded.

"It is impressive, it is a brutal violence with which Cyclone Harry has hit these territories. We are here with the mayor and we thank him for welcoming us to see and touch what these communities are experiencing. Of course there are many municipalities affected on the Ionian coast, today I was not able to visit them all, I just arrived from Niscemi, but our parliamentarians will continue to be at the disposal of the administrators and these communities to give all the attention and all the support they need to give concrete answers to these communities as soon as possible,'. So says Elly Schlein in Riposto, Sicily.

"There are activities that are completely devastated, workers who are at a standstill right now, families in great difficulty. We need to give a prompt, immediate response, precisely because when the good season arrives we want to imagine that they are put in a position to be back on their feet, to start again. It is also fundamental for the economy of this area. We will do our part to support them. Our closeness goes out to all the communities affected, in Sicily, in Calabria, in Sardinia. We will also do our part in Parliament, as well as at the regional and local level to give all the necessary support, these are the things we are focusing on. There is a lot of damage to economic activities, to agricultural activities, to infrastructure and also to houses, to people.

"So the first issue is resources, we need to find them because the estimated damage in the three worst hit regions was around 2 billion, so the resources allocated yesterday, those 100 million, are insufficient, we need to find more. We proposed, for example, to immediately divert a billion that had been put on the Messina Bridge project for 2026, which clearly cannot be used because of the Court of Auditors' stock. Why not give it immediately to these territories, these communities, to give a signal right away?".