The Italian Society of Environmental Geology (SIGEA) will appeal against the Naples Prosecutor’s Office request to dismiss the investigation into the fatal 2022 Casamicciola landslide. SIGEA, a scientific and cultural association listed among the injured parties in the probe concerning the November 26 natural disaster, announced the legal challenge.
Society President Antonello Fiore stated: “While we acknowledge the prosecutors’ and consultants’ complex work to define the causes and effects of the November 26, 2022 event in Casamicciola Terme – which claimed twelve lives including young children – the dismissal request is unacceptable.”
Fiore argued that closing the case “sends the public, administrators, technicians, and communication professionals the message that such natural phenomena are unpredictable, promoting a fatalistic view amplified not by human behavior or how our inhabited, income-generating territories have been managed over years, but by the ‘exceptionality’ of events – even when precursor phenomena exist.”
SIGEA contends sufficient evidence existed to foresee a devastating landslide, particularly in the Celario area where mud and debris from Mount Epomeo flowed after torrential rains on November 26, 2022. The group cites the 2009 landslide at Casamicciola, which killed one person, as a precursor event.
The appeal promoters stated: “Had municipal authorities paid proper attention to events on the same slope affected by the November 26 geo-hydrological disaster, and had they planned post-2009 risk mitigation interventions subsequently implemented over the next 13 years, the landslide’s initial trigger and its progression downslope would not have had the same devastating impact downstream.”
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