Landslide in Niscemi, former officials of the Civil Protection listened to by the Prosecutor's Office regarding unspent funds

The investigative activity of the Gela Prosecutor's Office continues, which, after the landslide that hit the town of Niscemi, in the province of Caltanissetta, opened a file, still against unknown individuals, for negligent disaster.

The head of the prosecutors, Salvatore Vella, heard yesterday, during preliminary testimonial information, for 8 hours, engineer Tuccio D’Urso, who in 1997, the year when another huge landslide affected the area, was responsible for the Sicilian Civil Protection. Today, instead, in the offices of the Caltanissetta Mobile Squad, another former director of the regional civil protection, engineer Calogero Foti, was heard.

Right after the disaster of January 26 last, when dozens of houses fell downhill, dragged by the landslide movement, during a series of interviews, D’Urso recalled the interventions made after the 1997 emergency. At that time, Caltanissetta Prefect Giannola was appointed commissioner (she also appeared before the prosecutors). "Once the emergency was over, everything came to a halt - said the former director -. It should be noted that construction should never have been allowed on that slope; it was established that the contributing factors to the collapse were and are the infiltration of rainwater and sewage discharges. Planning and implementing the sewer system as well as a series of drainage channels began. As so many times before, I was also unceremoniously removed from the Civil Protection. I was inconvenient for the sitting president. I see from the images that nothing of the water protection system has been implemented while controversies have been produced by the ton."

And it is precisely on the missed interventions, including consolidation, and on the funds allocated but never spent that the magistrates of Gela are investigating, having gathered a considerable amount of documents to reconstruct the history of the Niscemi landslide.