Riposto (Catania), the day after Harry. Scenes of the consequences of the Mediterranean cyclone that hit the South are bouncing around on social media, while the news is almost ignored by the national news programs (there was no sign of it at the start of the 8 and 1 pm edition of TG1, only in the middle of the news was it discussed in reports lasting a couple of minutes). We exchange messages with friends, colleagues and relatives: “Are you seeing the devastation”? “How’s it going where you are?”, “Goodbye seafront”, “What anguish, thank goodness no one died”.
We knew that the arrival of the Mediterranean cyclone would be a disaster, the experts had predicted it. And it was. The orders to close schools, parks and roads, considered by some to be “exaggerated”, have prevented deaths and injuries. But, as the images we shot in the Ionian city show, what remains after the powerful storm is desolation mixed with anger.
Riposto is just one of the many cities in Southern Italy brought to its knees by strong gusts of wind and intense storms and today it is the emblem of a territory deeply wounded on a physical and moral level. Walking through its streets is like walking through a war scene: the seafront, already compromised, has given way; Huge boulders were thrown into the squares and streets by the fury of the sea which still does not subside today; houses, shops and restaurants are flooded and partially destroyed.
And all this happened while the trauma of the November 2024 flood is still alive, when water and mud invaded homes and dragged cars into the sea. The damage count has just begun and the first estimates speak of damages amounting to tens of millions of euros, in Sicily alone. But in the midst of the chaos, one thing is clear: we are no longer faced with “extraordinary” extreme events and, above all, we are not prepared at all.
Ordinances are not enough, foresight and responsibility are needed
In Italy alone, over 800 extreme events have been recorded in the last 11 years, as illustrated by Legambiente’s CittàClima 2025 report.
And in the ranking of the countries most affected by the consequences of the climate crisis in the last 30 years, our country ranks sixteenth out of a total of 174 nations (and no one in the top 10 is among the richest and most industrialized ones).
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The truth is that ordinances are not enough and treating these events as an emergency phenomenon will not save us. Serious planning and structural investments are needed. We need courageous political choices against wild urbanization and to protect ourselves from hydrogeological risks. Instead of investing in weapons, we must think about our peninsula, which is increasingly vulnerable.
Because every time we postpone and minimize, the territory in which we live and to which we are linked pays the bill, the people pay it, our future pays it. And by calling them emergencies, we are normalizing disasters.
