Sarno, Fifteen, Bracigliano, Let them be And San Felice a Cancello 26 years ago, they were overwhelmed by one of the most serious hydrogeological disasters in the history of our country. This event marked a turning point, accelerating the strengthening of monitoring and surveillance networks, as explained by the Department of Civil Protection. The process of establishing the Network of Functional Centers has been started, which constitute the basis of the current national meteorological-hydro warning system. The Fire Brigade also remembers that tragic event: “One hundred and sixty victims, including our colleague Marco Mattiucci who died during rescue operations.
Today, twenty-six years later, the thoughts of the National Fire Brigade turn to the terrible flood that hit Sarno, Siano, Braciliano and Diecici“.
The flood of Sarno and Diecici
The May 5, 1998 incessant rain hits the province of Salerno. Since two in the afternoon, over 140 landslides have hit the municipalities of Diecici, Bracigliano, Siano, San Felice a Cancello, Sarno and other centers in the Salerno and Neapolitan areas, spilling over 2 million cubic meters of material. 160 people lost their lives, 137 of them in Sarno alone. Hundreds injured, thousands homeless. In terms of victims, Sarno is the most serious hydrogeological disaster to hit Italy in the last 50 years, after the Vajont in 1963 and Stava in 1985.
At 5.30pm on 5 May the prefecture of Salerno, which is responsible for coordinating civil protection in the province, was concentrated on Bracigliano, Diecici and Siano where the situation seemed more serious and where the mayors had already ordered the evacuation from the first flows. In Sarno, however, the alarm does not go off for the population and, around 6pm, one of the heaviest tragedies ever faced by our country begins. The police are doing everything possible to help the population evacuate the affected areas. Around 8pm the situation worsens: a gigantic wave overwhelms people, houses, cars. At 11.45pm Sarno was devastated by another landslide, which hit the town at a speed of 50-60 km/h.
Help arrives from all over Italy. The search for the missing is carried out with the maximum involvement of men and means and following the activities personally is Franco Barberi, undersecretary of the Ministry of the Interior with responsibility for civil protection. To deal with the emergency situation, various operational centers have been set up. The search and rescue activities ended on May 8 with the rescue of a boy buried in the mud, the last survivor of the catastrophe.
The state of emergency for Sarno was declared by Decree of the President of the Council of Ministers of 9 May 1998 and subsequently extended several times. Ordinance no. 2787 of 1998 appoints the President of the Campania Region as delegate commissioner, whose commissioner structure, in addition to implementing the plan of structural interventions, prepares an “Interprovincial emergency plan – mudslide risk” in the municipalities involved, activated by a hydro-pluviometric monitoring system which in subsequent phases – territorial garrison, alert, pre-alarm and alarm – activates civil protection resources.
The Sarno event, from the point of view of monitoring and surveillance of hydrogeological events, led to a decisive change of direction in the approach to risk, which until then had been characterized mainly by structural interventions and rescue and assistance activities.
The Decree-Law n. 180 of 1998, better known as the “Sarno Decree”, subsequently converted into Law no. 267 of 3 August 1998, led to a decisive acceleration of both the perimeter activities of areas at hydrogeological risk and the strengthening of monitoring and surveillance networks.
Before this event, the Campania monitoring network had few remote measuring rain gauges, none of which were located in the Sarno area. Today there are numerous telemeasurement rain gauges and they provide real-time data to both the Regional Functional Center and the Central Functional Center at the Department of Civil Protection. It is therefore the Sarno Law that initiates the construction of the network of Functional Centers, supporting the strengthening of the national hydro-meteo-pluviometric monitoring network and the construction of the national meteorological radar network.
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