The pictures are impressive. In Italy, in several large cities, the ground is collapsing, without warning. In the parking lot of the Naples hospital, in an instant, a hole several tens of meters in diameter and 20 meters deep had formed last January. Miraculously, he had no casualties.
Under a thin surface layer, there was only emptiness, explained this January 8 the spokesperson for the city’s firefighters, turning his back on a hole which, in a few moments, engulfed the six vehicles parked there. . This phenomenon is not isolated: collapses are regular in Italy, especially after heavy rains.
The reason ? As in Rome, the subsoil is a gruyère: it is composed of volcanic tuff, an unstable rock which is soft in places and harder in others, tells France 2 in a report.
A brigade to track down threatened areas
In an attempt to limit the damage, a brigade, unique in Europe, scans the basements in search of faults in the basement, which could threaten the surface. A delicate mission, because the ground could be destabilized at any time by the simple human presence. In the Naples sector, they have already discovered more than thirty kilometers of galleries which threaten part of the city and its suburbs.
Ancient galleries threaten Rome
In Rome, another problem: about ten meters below the city, there is another city, designed 2000 years earlier by the Romans. Collapses are regular in these ancient galleries. And the experts are pessimistic: in the event of an earthquake in Rome, everything could collapse without warning. A sword of Damocles with which the Italians of these areas must learn to live as these collapses are unpredictable.
Read also : Genoa disaster: images of the collapse of the bridge (video)
A report from France 2 covered the extent of this phenomenon: