After increasing volcanic activity in the Campi Flegrei area, outside Naples, the Civil Protection Minister Nello Musumeci has announced that, “I have just signed the decree to order the extraordinary mobilization of the National Civil Defense Service to support Campania. I have thus accepted the request of the president of that region in order to cope with the critical situation that was determined in the Phlegraean Fields after the seismic event on May 20, as part of the ongoing bradyseismic phenomenon.”
Musumeci has been requested to assess the volatile situation in the Campi Flegrei by the Environment Commission of the Chamber of Deputies. He continued, “To better operate in the difficult situation, our Department ensures the coordination of the intervention of the National Service of Civil Protection, in support of regional structures, in order to help ensure assistance and relief to the citizens involved. At the same time, we are working, with the appropriate ministers, on a careful reconnaissance of the financial resources necessary for the first interventions to secure public infrastructure and civil housing, starting with those falling in areas of high seismic risk in bradyseismic areas.”
The recent alarming seismic activity, and Musumeci’s words, have the residents of one of the most densely populated areas on earth worried. “Safety” in the face of such phenomena “does not exist, it is a relative fact”, he said. Some residents have been camping out in the streets for fear that a greater tragedy may be impending.
Moreover, the minister noted that the major risks commission “maintained the yellow alert” while urging maximum attention “to the carrying out of the exercises and the full involvement of the population” of around 80 thousand inhabitants, of whom 35 thousand are located in the area of greatest risk.
Out of over 4 thousand buildings examined by 100 technicians divided into 55 teams, 1.250 “are found to be at high seismic risk, while the remaining part is considered to be at medium seismic risk”.
It’s a complex situation, he said, aggravated by the urban density of the area. Musumeci remarked that,”it was a crime to have allowed the settlement of over 80 thousand people in that area”, recalling that “coexistence had to be regulated without high-density settlements, as instead occurred”.
Given the situation, an efficient evacuation in the event of a catastrophic explosion or earthquake would probably be impossible. In the future the government will include “an absolute ban on any other construction of cubic capacity for residential buildings” in the Campi Flegrei area affected by the bradyseismic phenomenon.
“It is not possible to develop a removal plan on the one hand and an urban development plan on the other”, the minister stated.
However, for the short term, the increasing seismic activity in one of the most dangerous areas in the world, coupled with an unforeseen population density and structures that frequently are not seismic resistant, creates an alarming condition that bears close monitoring.
