Niscemi is on the edge of the abyss.Image: keystone
Concern continues to grow in the small southern Italian town. But once again it is clear that it is not extreme natural events alone, but official negligence and the carelessness of residents that have exacerbated the emergency.
01/29/2026, 06:0701/29/2026, 06:07
Dominik Straub, Rome / ch media
The place name Niscemi probably didn’t mean anything to around 99.9 percent of the world’s population until a few days ago – now the small town with its 25,000 inhabitants is causing a stir around the globe with spectacular aerial photos.
What you can see is a city that is literally on the edge: the ground has collapsed over a length of over four kilometers in the southwestern part of the town; the almost vertically sloping wall that was formed is up to forty meters high. Above it you can see houses that stand directly on the edge of the demolition; In some of them, individual parts of the building have already collapsed into the abyss.
This is what it looks like in Niscemi:
Video: Watson/Lucas Zollinger
Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has made the Niscemi landslide a top priority and flew over the city in a helicopter yesterday to get an idea of the situation. She then met with the municipal authorities, the Sicilian regional president Renato Schifani and the national civil protection chief Fabio Ciciliano. The latter explained that the situation remained “critical”.
All houses were evacuated within a distance of 150 meters to the edge of the demolition; The area has been declared a “red zone” which no one is allowed to enter. A total of 1,500 residents have had to leave their homes so far.
Giorgia Meloni during her visit to Niscemi.Image: www.imago-images.de
Nothing learned from the past
According to geologists and meteorologists, the external cause of the emergency in Niscemi is the storm “Harry”, which has caused enormous damage throughout southern Italy in the last few days, especially on the coasts, and was accompanied by heavy, persistent rain. At Niscemi, which stands on a high plateau about 30 kilometers from the sea, the soil has apparently become full of water like a sponge; As a result, the ground at the extreme southwestern tip of the city gave way and sank. Because it is still raining in the area, the risk of further demolitions has not been averted.
But it would be too easy to blame the force of nature “Harry”. The authorities and residents have known since time immemorial that the subsoil of Niscemi is unstable. The first major landslide of which there is written evidence occurred in March 1790, the last in October 1997.
«What is happening in Niscemi today is a predicted disaster. “The children here also knew that this terrain was slipping,” explained the Minister of Civil Protection in the Meloni government, Nello Musumeci, to the “Corriere della Sera”. You should never have built anything here, says the minister. “Unfortunately, the past has taught us nothing.”
After the landslide in 1997, the government in Rome, the regional authorities and the municipality promised safety measures. Among other things, the area at risk should be provided with a drainage system that would divert rainwater into the Benefizio River in the event of future heavy rain in order to prevent large-scale seepage. But practically nothing was done concretely
Nothing happened under Minister Musumeci, who was regional president of Sicily from 2017 to 2022. Musumeci, a party friend of Meloni, now tells the “Corriere della Sera” that it would have been a matter for the municipality. The municipality replies that the region was responsible for this.
In Italy, after natural disasters, the black peter game regarding failure to take precautionary and safety measures is as certain as Amen in church. There is also a bad tradition of building in areas where it would be better not to do so. Half a million people live in the red zone above the supervolcano in the Phlegraean Fields west of Naples, and a few dozen kilometers further east under Vesuvius there are even 700,000.
If you ask the local residents whether they are not afraid, you will sometimes hear the sentence: “Oh, you know, the Signore (the Lord God) has already decided long ago when my hour will strike.” And also: “Where should we go?”
This Catholic trust in God, which is widespread in Italy – you could also call it fatalism – is also no stranger to Civil Protection Minister Musumeci. Regarding the landslide in Niscemi, the native Sicilian explained: “It seems we have once again entrusted ourselves to fate.” (aargauerzeitung.ch)