The wave does not stopfires in Southern Italy. Hundreds of fires, almost all arson, are devastating thousands of hectares in Sicily, Calabria, Campania despite the incessant work of the firefighters engaged on the ground and of the Canadair and helicopter pilots.
From today the Army presides over the access roads to the Vesuvio, where 100 hectares of forest have been destroyed so far. Meanwhile, the flames have also reached Positano and the firefighters had to protect the hospital in Ottaviano.
In Calabria instead the first victims are counted. Two farmers in the province of Cosenza died while trying to put out the fires that had hit their land. The first, a 68-year-old pensioner, ended up in a ditch after being hit by the smoke that had invaded his olive grove in Cessaniti. The second, a 69-year-old, was found dead on his land in San Pietro in Guarano.
No victims but hundreds of evacuees in Basilicata, due to the flames that surrounded 3 campsites in Metaponto.
In Sardiniafinally, the regional operating committee was convened to coordinate the operations to extinguish the fires that are affecting Gallura.
Secondo Legambientebetween mid-June and 12 July 26 hectares of woods went up in smoke: the same area that burned throughout 2016. Moreover, since the beginning of the year, another record has been set: the state fleet intervened 769 times, the highest peak in the last 10 years. In 2007, a hellish year for fires, requests stopped at 722. And in 2012, another difficult year, there were 458.
Yesterday the firefighters carried out more than a thousand interventions, a quarter of which in Sicily where all the provinces are affected by the fires.
Meanwhile, the controversy over the dissolution of the State Forestry Corps, transited in the Carabinieri and, to a small extent (360 people out of almost seven thousand foresters) in the Fire Brigade.
