Between Piedmont and Cilento, the inhabitants of Portici have no doubts: the splendid land celebrated years ago on the big screen in «Welcome to the South» is better. Thus the mayor of Portici Enzo Cuomoacting as an interpreter of the “popular sentiment” of his fellow citizens, asks the Civil Protection department and the Campania Region that in the unfortunate event of a Vesuvius crisis, the people of Portico be transferred to Cilento rather than to distant Piedmont.
«To date, very few citizens of Portici have felt the tremors caused by Vesuvius», stated Vincenzo Cuomo, regarding the recent seismic sequence recorded in the Vesuvius area, magnitude 3.1 on the Richter scale, with an epicenter seven km from Portici.
Two weeks ago another earthquake was recorded on Vesuvius, with a magnitude of 2.1 on the Richter scale and was located at a depth of 8 kilometers, with the epicenter in Portici.
The mayor of the Neapolitan municipality relaunches the request made in October 2019 with a resolution in the city council: «On evacuation due to volcanic risk, there is a plan from the Civil Protection department which is based on the predictability of the volcanic eruption according to which one should evacuate before the eruption of Vesuvius. With respect to this plan – Cuomo argues – we ask again the Department of Civil Protection and the Campania Region to be assigned to Cilento rather than Piedmont, as the plan indicates: many citizens of Portici have homes in the Cilento area and from a morphological point of view the Cilento is more similar to Portici”, concludes the mayor. In short, we could exploit the beach houses of residents under Vesuvius who, in case of need, would find it less difficult to move to a pleasant place that many know and frequent.
For now however – it is better to reiterate – Vesuvius does not give any signs of concern: the tremors that occur frequently, including those with a magnitude greater than 1, are according to experts attributable to the phenomenon of subsidence, that is, the slow and progressive lowering of the level of Vesuvius due to the compaction of the soil that has been occurring for 80 years now, the date on which the last eruption occurred.
