ROME – A landslide swept away a cemetery on the edge of a cliff in the northern Italian region of Liguria, scattering about 200 coffins and corpses over a hill and the Mediterranean Sea.
Divers recovered 12 coffins from the sea on Wednesday after the landslide in the city of Camogli, about eight kilometers north of Portofino, two days earlier. Most of the coffins of the cemetery remained around and under the rubble caused by the landslide.
Family members of people buried in the cemetery gathered on the main square of the coastal town to get news and protest about what they believe was negligence by the local authorities.
“It was the only place I could go and see my parents and talk to them,” Clara Terrile, 66, who owns a shoe store in Camogli, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “Now I have nothing left.”
The landslide was probably caused by the erosion of the cliff below the cemetery, exacerbated by storms that have hit the fragile Ligurian coast in recent years, according to the Italian National Council of Geologists.
“This event has hit the community emotionally hard,” said Francesco Olivari, the mayor of Camogli. “The whole of Liguria is characterized by these phenomena, it was difficult to foresee it,” he said.
The landslide, which took place along the coast from Genoa, where a bridge collapsed in 2018, killed 43 people, causing outrage in Italy over a lack of infrastructure maintenance and the prevention of natural disasters. Prosecutors in Genoa are investigating the collapse of the cemetery.
“This is Italy, even dead people can not rest in peace,” one person said regret on Twitter.
The landslide shows ‘the lack of maintenance that our geologists have been exposing for years’, said Domenico Angelone, the secretary of the National Council of Geologists, in a statement. Despite their ‘high social, moral and cultural value’, cemeteries are often built in unstable places and have had a ‘lack of attention’ in recent years, he added.
The city began to reinforce the cliff at the cemetery and over the past few days the area was closed after officials noticed cracks and heard a ‘crack’. Mr. Olivari, the mayor, said. Some residents have argued that they have been reporting cracks and problems with the structure of the cemetery for years.
Lilla Mariotti, a resident of Camogli, posted a photo of cracks in the walls of the cemetery on Facebook. According to her, she sent the mayor in 2012. “I never got any answers,” she wrote.
Mrs. Terrile said she wrote to City Hall in 2007 to report cracks in front of her father’s grave, but also never received a response. In 2019, she reported more cracks, and City Hall corrected that, she said. A few weeks ago, during a visit to the cemetery, she noticed that the same cracks had reappeared.
“I hope my parents are among the bodies they found,” she said. “I do not even have a place to bring a flower.”
Mr. Olivari, the mayor, said the city has instituted psychological support for the families affected there.
Regional authorities have asked for help for national rescue services since the operation to search for coffins and corpses, depending on safety on the cliff, which is in danger of collapsing further.
For now, divers can only rescue coffins floating in the sea, as most of the others have been buried under the rubble of the landslide, said Giacomo Giampedrone, the leading local civil protection officer.