Yesterday night, it was almost dawn on May 14th, another street of Naples And sunkoverwhelmed by the force of a river of water spewed from a pipe that suddenly split, just as what happened in Vomero last February.
It happened at Corso Arnaldo Lucciat the intersection with Via Padre Rocco, the residents were awakened by the gurgling of water that flowed directly from the asphalt, then, suddenly, the dull sound of the subsidence, and the chasm that swallowed the asphalt.
The firefighters arrived on site immediately. They could not help but ask for the intervention of ABC, the company that manages water and sewerage, to urgently block the flow of water which represented the first, great, danger. Emergency calls were also made to the police, who also reached the area. The city’s civil protection and municipal police were also alerted and dealt with traffic management from the first moment, and throughout yesterday, which, however, was never blocked. Limited inconvenience for the inhabitants of the area, with water suspension limited only to the moments of the necessary repair and no alarm for the static stability of the buildings next to the sinkhole, even if for some time it was feared that they may have suffered damage.
Fortunately, the explosion of the pipeline revealed the problems immediately, thus preventing the run-off of the underlying land from spreading silently, without showing any signs, as happened in via Morghen where the “emptying” below the surface road went on for a long time before the sinkhole appeared and swallowed two cars.
In this case no vehicle was involved and no injuries were reported. The experts who arrived on site explained that the pipe that collapsed belonged to the drinking water services and was, therefore, under pressure. The power of the water created the void under the road where it then occurred sinking. When the asphalt disintegrated, a real pool of water could be observed underneath. The images recorded by the first responders after the emergency calls were dramatic, showing a river of water feeding from underground and vigorously flooding Corso Arnaldo Lucci and the nearby Via Padre Rocco.
The repairs were started when the sun had not yet risen and continued throughout yesterday with little inconvenience to the traffic which was never blocked because the workers were able to work only on the closed portion of the road while the cars covered the remaining part with a narrowing.
The topic of collapsing pipelines is at the top of ABC’s list of projects. Mechanisms capable of detecting drops in pressure which signal significant leaks in the drinking water network have already been set up in many areas of the city, starting from the western area. The project for a monitoring network also dedicated to sewerage pipes is underway.
