As the hours pass, hopes of finding them alive become increasingly tenuous, but in the municipality of San Felice a Cancello, in the province of Caserta, the watchword remains “keep searching”. Angela Minieri, 82, and Giuseppe Guadagnino, 41, mother and son, have been missing since yesterday afternoonwhen a river of mud fed by a violent downpour surprised them along the road back home. Until a few minutes before Angela and Giuseppe were in the upper part of the Talanico hill, a hamlet of San Felice a Cancello, picking hazelnuts, and as soon as it started to rain heavily they got on the Apecar and tried to go back. But along the way the vehicle was overwhelmed, swallowed up by that torrent of mud and debris that left behind major disasters.
Raffaele Guadagnino, Giuseppe’s brother and Angela’s son, is in shock. He was in those camps too. And he left at the same time his brother and mother did. He left first on his Apecar, and Giuseppe moved right after. Moments. Moments that turned the life of this family upside down. “When it started raining it was terrible, huge hailstones were falling, and a lot of rain,” he said. Giuseppe spent the night looking for his loved ones. There was a great mobilization for Angela and Giuseppe. The firefighters did not stop for a moment: ten teams were at work, supported by canine units and drones. But not even the images from above have been able, for now, to provide useful information to find mother and child. Work is still underway: on the ground with excavators, a dog unit, river flood rescuers and experts in topography, from above with drones equipped with thermal cameras and a helicopter. Work is still underway in a desperate race against time, because there is fear of a possible new wave of bad weather for the evening, as another weather alert has been issued by the Civil Protection until midnight.
“The priority right now is to find the missing. It is the absolute priority that we have all given ourselves,” says the mayor of San Felice a Cancello Emilio Nuzzo. The youngest are helping out, observing the territory and in particular the canal where the Apecar was found on board of which Angela and Giuseppe were traveling. The searches, in fact, are focusing on the path taken by the Apecar that flows into a water containment tank. Prayers are being said in San Felice a Cancello, but the damages of the storm are also being dealt with. Mayor Nuzzo has asked for a state of natural disaster, by submitting a formal request to the Prefecture of Caserta, to the President of the Campania Region and to the Regional Department of Civil Protection. The request states that the storm has caused “a serious situation of danger for the safety of people, as well as the evacuation of some people from their homes”.
Specifically, the mayor highlighted that the atmospheric events “have caused flooding, landslides with consequent damage to various infrastructures, to the network of essential services, to public and private structures and to productive activities”. Damage that, the mayor noted, has caused an “emergency situation” that “due to its intensity and extent, cannot be addressed with the ordinary means and powers available to the Municipality of San Felice a Cancello”. For all these reasons, the mayor observed, “all the conditions exist for a state of natural disaster to be declared in the municipal territory with the activation of regional and state resources to be allocated, aimed at restoring, in conditions of safety, the damaged public or public interest structures and infrastructures and at removing the danger or preventing the risk as well as granting any contributions to citizens and businesses damaged by the calamitous events”. The prefect of Caserta, Giuseppe Castaldo, has already assured that he will support the request for a state of calamity presented by the Municipality («There will be a regional investigation and we will follow the request with the utmost attention») and at the same time coordinates the operations to deal with the emergency. A reception center has been activated for this evening in case of need for the population, in light of the new weather alert issued by the regional civil protection.
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