The collapse of a four-story pantheon in a cemetery in the Italian city of Naples has uncovered a dozen coffins, some of them hanging several meters high. It is the second time that a collapse of this type has occurred in the same cemetery.
Authorities sealed off the Poggioreale cemetery as an investigation into the collapse of the marble building, called Resurrection, in the area of the Balestrieri Gate. There were no visitors in the churchyard at the time of the collapse.
Critics blame the bad management of the cemeteries in the Italian city, since Naples is a metropolis characterized by a policy that is usually questioned by bad practices. Especially since the Poggioreale case is no longer considered an isolated case by analysts, but rather a fact about which no solution or remodeling of the building has been taken since the first collapse that occurred last year. January 5.
Non c’è pace per il cimitero di Poggioreale a Napoli. Oggi c’è stato unovo crollo e alcune bare sono rimaste suspected in the vote. Nove mesi fa a simile episode has determined a long closure pic.twitter.com/Q8V2iOwu3m
— Tg3 (@Tg3web) October 17, 2022
“The collapse was preceded by an explosion and a dense cloud of dust”, assured Vincenzo Santagada, councilor of Naples and responsible for the city’s cemeteries. “As an administration we are taking care of all the necessary procedures”, he added.
A parallel investigation after some 300 coffins were destroyed in the collapse of a building in another area of the cemetery in January.
The families of the dead staged a protest on Tuesday. It is the case of Maurizio Bodiwhose wife, parents and in-laws are buried in coffins in this building, has assured the newspaper Dire of Italy: “The only luck is that their coffins have not fallen, since they are inside the building.”
Part of the collapsed building in the Naples cemetery.
Politicians version
Politicians in Campania (the region surrounding Naples) have pointed out that the city’s cemeteries have not been cared for or remodeled for years.
“There has been a new collapse in the Poggioreale cemetery,” Francesco Emilio Borelli, regional councilor for the Europe Greens party, wrote on Facebook. “This is one critical and unacceptable situation. For too many years, the cemeteries of Naples have been poorly managed and left to fend for themselves, falling prey to swindlers and speculators.”
In February of last year, 200 coffins fell into the sea off the coastal city of Camogli, in Liguria (northern Italy) after parts of a cemetery collapsed in a landslide, which also destroyed two chapels.
