MILAN (Reuters) – A woman has been found dead and around 10 people are still missing on the southern Italian holiday island of Ischia after a landslide engulfed buildings during heavy rain on Saturday, a local official from the Italian government.
Torrential rains hit the port of Casamicciola Terme, one of the island’s six small towns, in the early hours, triggering flooding and collapsing buildings.
“Currently, the confirmed death toll is one woman. Eight missing people have been found, including a child, and there are still around 10 people missing,” Naples Mayor Claudio Palomba said at a press conference.
Infrastructure Minister Matteo Salvini said earlier at an event in Milan that eight people had been killed.
Seventy firefighters are working on the island, about 30 kilometers from Naples, to rescue residents from damaged buildings and search for missing people, Italy’s fire department said on Twitter.
Images showed thick mud, debris and rocks in Casamicciola Terme. Several cars were submerged on the shore, apparently pushed out to sea by the storm.
“There are some difficulties in the rescue operations because the weather conditions are still challenging,” Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi told reporters in Rome.
Ischia is a volcanic island that attracts visitors due to its thermal baths and its fascinating mountainous coastline. The island is densely populated and statistics show that the place has a large number of illegally built houses, which puts the inhabitants at permanent risk in case of earthquakes and floods.
In 2006, a landslide killed a father and his three daughters on the island.
(Reporting by Gianluca Semeraro; additional reporting by Sara Rossi and Angelo Amante)
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