A human error?
October 22, 2009
Floods and mudslides invaded the province of Messina on the Italian island of Sicily earlier this month, killing 24 people. Italian officials blamed the ferocity of the storm that hit the area, bringing some 25 centimeters (9 inches) of rain in just three hours, but they also acknowledged that deforestation and unregulated development had weakened the soil and contributed to the mudslides.
The disaster has prompted environmentalists to step up their campaign against illegal construction, which is rampant throughout Italy. Even Italian President Giorgio Napolitano has denounced the illegal activities, which he said had caused "widespread" disruption in Messina's topography.
Regulations often not enforced
Illegal construction is one of the biggest problems affecting Italy's geology. Determining the exact number of illegal structures in the country is impossible, but the Italian Environment League tallied some 400,000 built illegally between1993 and 2004. According to geologist Giorgio Zampetti, head of the Italian Environment League's scientific unit, this illegal construction is being carried out even in areas of geological high risk, like Messina.
"Unfortunately, even in places where there have been the most tragedies or the most violent incidents, nothing has changed regarding the model of development," said Zampetti.
"For example, if we think of Sarno in the Campania Region, where in 1998 there were more than 150 victims and one of the biggest geological tragedies in Italy, illegal construction still continues in those places and there isn't a real project to replenish forests on the slopes to make them more solid," he added.
It is often the most beautiful and scenic areas that are prone to illegal building, precisely because national parks and protected areas make for desirable real estate. The environmental impact of these projects ranges from erosion to flash floods, said Zampetti.
The problem does not stem from a lack of legislation, since Italy has strict regulations regarding construction. Each time land is zoned or applications for building are made, geological tests are supposed to be carried out. However, the rules often go unenforced or are incorrectly applied.
A country at risk
While the Messina disaster might have come as a shock for some, it was not a big surprise for experts like Professor Pietro Antonio De Paola, president of the Italian Order of Geologists - a group that constantly monitors Italy's geology.
"Our country is so fragile and so densely populated that no part of it can be considered completely safe at the moment," said De Paola.
"The extreme-risk situations are in the tens of thousands, not to mention areas of high, medium and low risk, which number hundreds of thousands. For this reason there's no one site or couple of sites that we geologists focus our attention on."
While geologists like De Paola say that landslides and mudslides are largely natural phenomena, human actions contribute to the problem. Cutting down trees, not maintaining water courses properly, fires and of course illegal, excessive or bad construction all contribute to devastating landslides.
"Messina is built on nine water channels that were once large rivers," said architect Andrea Calabro. "But people wanted to cover them completely, so now above these torrents of water there are streets and boulevards. Messina has little space for expansion, so people always tried to build behind their own homes.
"But they didn't take the sandy soil or ground structure into consideration, and often built on them in an incorrect way."
Author: Stephanie Raison (ew)
Editor: Kate Bowen