Landslides on the Amalfi Coast. Geologist Concetta Buonocore “Climate change accelerates erosive processes. A control room is urgently needed.” Doctor Buonocore intervenes on the latest episode, of the many, that we are experiencing on the SS163 with the landslide in Piano di Sorrento which isolated Positano from the Sorrento Peninsula and from the Naples – Salerno motorway to Castellammare di Stabia, which caused enormous difficulties and brought the Vertical City to its knees. This is a known problem for our territory, considered among the most at risk in Europe, which will tend to get worse. In the past we tried to create a control room, today more than ever it is urgent and necessary to take action in this sense.
“In 2013 the Campania region with the councilor for civil protection, Edoardo Cosenza, issued a recruitment notice for engineers and geologists – explains the geologist Buonocore –. The recruitment was followed by a training course, during which we drew up maps of the crisis points of all the municipalities in Campania, regarding the risk of landslides and floods. At the end of the course there was the exam and the awarding of the title of president. The region used resources for 14 million euros for the tender and the course. We, engineers and geologists, committed to following the course every day for 6 months and during which we carried out inspections and surveyed all the municipalities of Campania, were not granted any expense reimbursement. Once we had obtained the qualification, handed over the points cards crisis, support for the municipalities was supposed to follow and here everything stopped and nothing more was heard. Yet another waste of public money? The Campania region was far-sighted in 2013 because climate change was underway, but the current awareness was not there. As regards the risk of landslides and floods, the Amalfi Coast has always been under the eye of the cyclone and the ongoing climate change accelerates the erosive processes and exacerbates atmospheric phenomena, putting communities at risk. Today more relevant than ever, therefore it is of substantial importance, I would say vital, to put in place a control room with the technical committee and the team of specialized operators, depending on the operations to be carried out, to carry out inspections throughout the territory so as to be able to identify critical issues and prepare preventive interventions. Every year then, it could make public, with the appropriate methods, an account of everything that could have happened without the preventive intervention and quantify the savings of public money and the enormous inconvenience, which is so widespread that it is not possible to quantize, like what we are experiencing these days. “
