00:00More than 1,500 residents have been evacuated from a town on the Italian island of Sicily
00:05after a landslide triggered by violent storms left homes teetering on the edge of a cliff.
00:12Authorities say the entire area sits on a plateau that's gradually collapsing toward the plain below,
00:18driven by water that remains in the subsoil.
00:21Well, for more, let's cross live now to Seema Gupta, our correspondent in Italy.
00:26Seema, very dramatic images we're seeing of that situation in Sicily.
00:31Authorities there say the entire hill is moving, putting the stability of dozens of buildings at risk.
00:38What more do we know?
00:42Well, the Civil Protection Services head was in the town of Nuscemi, that's the town affected in Sicily.
00:50And he said that it is an active landslide and the situation is critical because, essentially, he says it's gradually collapsing to the plain that is below the Jela plain, as it's known.
01:05The mayor of the town also described the situation as dire.
01:10As you mentioned, 1,500 people evacuated, of course, having to move to other parts of the town to stay with their relatives and so on.
01:21And the situation is critical because, of course, there is still some rain on occasion,
01:26and that's making also the technical operations difficult to carry out.
01:31But they're trying to do what they can.
01:33But the situation is still an active landslide.
01:36Those landslides, of course, caused by Storm Harry that hit the southern regions of Italy last week.
01:43And so the government on Monday had already declared the regions of Sicily, Sardinia and Calabria as having a state of emergency.
01:52And that means they could release some funds.
01:55So they've initially set aside 100 million euros to deal with the initial needs.
02:01But some have estimated that the cost of the damage is definitely more than a billion euros instead.
02:09And Sima, we can see in some of those images, cars literally looking like they're about to fall off the edge of that cliff.
02:16Houses in very vulnerable situations.
02:18The evacuations, they've fuelled anxiety and anger as well.
02:22Among residents there, we're hearing people saying that earlier landslides went unaddressed by authorities.
02:28So what's actually going to happen to the people whose homes are affected?
02:32Are they going to have to be permanently relocated?
02:37Well, the authorities are saying that they will have to be permanently relocated.
02:41But as you can imagine, the frustration, the stress and the worry of what all of this means and the anger about the fact that there was a landslide in the same area 29 years ago.
02:55And the feeling among residents is that nothing, if not very little, was done since.
02:59And in fact, there was a meeting with some officials in the town and the residents came out shouting, shame, shame on you.
03:10What have you done for the last 30 years?
03:13And how are we going to live now?
03:15Always with a suitcase packed because we have to leave at a moment's notice.
03:19The leader of the centre-left opposition party, the Democratic Party, her name is Ellie Schlein, she also visited the town and she said that more needs to be done to help the residents.
03:32And that perhaps instead of building a proposed bridge by the government to link Sicily to the mainland, money should be used to help those affected by this bad weather.
03:42Understandably, a lot of anger there and anxiety.
03:45Seema, thanks so much for joining us with all of that.
03:47That's our correspondent in Italy, Seema Gupta.
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