Rubble and debris everywhere, shattered glass and several teams of men at work to look for the survivors: it is the surreal scenario that took shape after an explosion in the Agrigento area. The calculation of the dead and missing of the tragedy that took place on the evening of Saturday 11 December in Ravanusa, a municipality of almost 11 thousand inhabitants in the hinterland of Agrigento, is updated hour after hour: according to what the Civil Protection communicates, there are currently three deaths.
A powerful explosion, most likely due to a gas leak, seriously damaged seven buildings, some of which collapsed, others were gutted. The director of the regional civil protection Salvatore Cocina tried to hypothesize the dynamics of what happened: «a gas leak that created a sort of expanded methane pocket. The force of the explosion, perhaps triggered by the start of an elevator, may have been boosted by a gas heater, but it is still too early to tell. “
It could therefore have created a pocket, presumably underground, of gas, leaking from a pipe, which then generated a violent explosion. For now we can only put forward hypotheses on the reason for the rupture of the pipe; but among the most probable there is bad weather – which for weeks has subjected the whole of Sicily to flooding and discomfort of various kinds – or a landslide.
One of the surviving women, an 80-year-old pulled alive from the rubble of the building where she lived, told Republic that first the light went out, then both the floor and the roof collapsed; buried under the debris, she could also hear the voice of her sister-in-law calling for help. Fortunately, she too was rescued by rescuers. In the same four-storey building where the two women were located, 7 other family members lived. Unfortunately, a man and two women were found lifeless. The others are still missing, including a young woman at the end of her pregnancy and her husband.
The searches are proceeding to find the other missing people in which the teams of various municipalities neighboring Ravanusa are involved, also following an appeal from the mayor of the small municipality of Agrigento. The mayor informed that there should be no children among those missing from the buildings affected by the disaster.
The Agrigento prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation for culpable disaster.
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