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NAPLES

‘We were lucky’: Passengers escape after giant sinkhole swallows cars in Naples

A chasm opened up in a road in Naples' Vomero district early on Wednesday, swallowing two cars with people inside.

Published: 21 February 2024 12:09 CET
Naples' Castel Sant'Elmo sits on the city's Vomero district on the top of a hill.
Naples' Castel Sant'Elmo sits in the city's Vomero district on top of a hill. Photo by GABRIEL BOUYS / AFP)

Video footage published to social media on Wednesday morning showed scenes of panic as passengers escaped from the cars under a torrent of water.

The vehicles’ occupants were rescued and no one was injured in the incident, which was thought to have been caused by a water leak.

“We were arriving from Via Bonito when, turning towards Via Morghen, the earth beneath us gave way. We suddenly found ourselves sunk underground,” local councillor Giulio Delle Donne, who was in one of the cars, told the news site Fanpage.

“We were lucky because at that moment there was an Italian army patrol in the area. The soldiers pulled us out of the hole with their arms,” he said.

“Along with the road, a tree and a lamppost collapsed, fortunately seconds after we got out of the passenger compartment. A few more moments and it would have been potentially fatal.”

Naples city council said initial checks appeared to show that the sewer had collapsed, adding in a tweet that a tweet that local police, firemen, and workers from the city’s water company were on the scene.

Significant amounts of water leaked onto Via Kerbaker, below the site of the collapse, where terraces and apartments were flooded.

“The water supply pipeline has been closed and the water supply has therefore been interrupted in the San Martino area and from Piazza Vanvitelli upwards,” the council said in a statement.

The nearby Salesiani high school was closed as a precautionary measure, and it’s expected that a building next to the sinkhole on Via Morghen will be evacuated while workers fix the problem.

This is far from the first time a sinkhole has opened in Naples – just last month, Via Manzoni was closed after the collapse of another sewage pipe opened up a hole in the road.

Questioned by journalists on Wednesday, Mayor Gaetano Manfredi blamed the problem on a lack of regular maintenance carried out in the past.

“We have a situation at the sewer system that has not had maintenance for many, many years,” he said.

“We are putting in place monitoring projects, to do preventive maintenance. We’re also doing major cleanup work.”

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ACCIDENT

Rescuers seek four missing after deadly Italy power plant blast

An explosion at an Italian hydroelectric power plant near Bologna on Tuesday afternoon killed at least three people and left four missing, officials said.

Published: 10 April 2024 12:55 CEST
Rescuers seek four missing after deadly Italy power plant blast

Rescuers on Wednesday continued to search for four workers still missing after an explosion at a hydroelectric plant in Italy, which has already left three confirmed dead.

“The toll is four missing and three dead,” a fire service spokesman told AFP, revising downwards a toll of four deaths given by local authorities on Tuesday evening.

But there are fears the death toll will rise, amid difficult searches at the Bargi hydroelectric plant run by Enel Green Power on Lake Suviana, near Bologna.

Searches are ongoing, with authorities calling the rescue operation complex as water continues to enter the plant.

The explosion of a turbine, whose cause has not yet been determined, occurred on the eighth floor below the water level, said Bologna’s prefect Attilio Visconti.

“On the ninth floor there was flooding due to a turbine cooling pipe” that brought in several metres of water, Visconti told reporters outside the plant.

A fire service spokesman, Luca Cari, told the ANSA news agency that rescuers “are not working with much hope of finding the missing (people) alive”.

Still, the department’s regional director Francesco Notaro told reporters that workers “maybe found shelter somewhere else” within the large space following the blast.

Firefighters working at the site of an explosion at a hydroelectric power plant on Lake Suviana in central Italy, near Bologna. (Photo by Vigili del Fuoco / AFP)

Five people were injured, according to the AGI news agency, which named the dead as three men aged 73, 45 and 35.

Enel Green Power, the renewables unit of energy giant Enel that operates the plant, offered its “deepest condolences” to the victims and their families following what it called a “serious accident”.

On Wednesday, it said that “efficiency works” had been underway at the time, the contracts for which had been awarded in 2022 to three main companies, Siemens, ABB and Voith.

“From what has been reconstructed, the testing of the first-generation group had already been completed in the past days and, at the time the accident occurred, the testing of the second group was underway,” the statement said.

“The company expresses its gratitude to the relevant authorities that are working tirelessly on rescue operations, to whom it is providing maximum support.”

It previously said the dam basin of the plant had not been damaged in the accident and that there had been no impact on local or national energy supplies.

The mayor of the nearby town of Camugnano, Marco Masinara, called the explosion a “terrible workplace accident” that affected the “entire community”.

“It seems there was a floor slab collapse and rescue is difficult as a lot of water entered inside the eighth basement floor,” he said late on Tuesday.

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