N°69 — A town on the brink

Niscemi, 4th March 2026, 

I was comfortably chilling on my sofa—for me, Sunday mornings are for relaxing—when suddenly, I started receiving messages from my partner and friends. Then the first videos came through. They showed a whole section of Niscemi, my town, which is built on a hill, completely collapsed. Some houses had fallen into a precipice which was 50 metres deep in places.

A friend of mine lives along one of the streets that was torn down the middle. As luck would have it, he was at his parents’ house for lunch at that moment. We were fortunate that the landslide occurred at lunchtime on a Sunday. So, there were very few people in the most affected area when it happened, otherwise that neighbourhood is usually very busy.

There was another landslide previously in 1997. In fact, we used to joke among friends, that, “Sooner or later, we’ll all end up living in Gela! ” Which is a town by the sea, at the bottom of our hill, 20 minutes from here. But you know, it was the kind of running joke you have with friends, no one imagined that something like this could actually happen.

It was a beautiful day that Sunday when the hill collapsed. It had rained constantly, day and night, for the entire month previously, around Christmas time. We’re not used to seeing so much rain in this part of Sicily! Then there was storm Harry which also played a part. Of course, that wasn’t the only cause of the landslide. It was a combination of factors that had gradually built up, including thirty years of neglect of the old sewage system and the fact that only part of the funds for securing the 1997 landslide ever materialized and that was in December 2025, almost 30 years later.

In the days that followed, it was total chaos. We met every day to clear out the houses we managed to get into, because we didn’t know if the landslide would continue to advance or not. On the first day, everyone living within a 50-metre radius was evacuated; then two days later, the safety perimeter was extended to 100 metres; and on the third day, another 50 metres. It was a week marked by fear, fear that the dividing line would extended further and further every day.

The people whose homes had collapsed, had to leave everything behind. They left that Sunday with only the clothes they were wearing and never returned.

One of my colleagues lived in the black zone, 20 metres from the precipice. When we went in to retrieve the most important things, we could see the void beneath our feet from the balcony. We took some clothes, valuables, a few letters, small electrical appliances… we filled our cars as much as possible.

For several days, I worked as a mover. I felt like one of the evacuees myself. In the evening, I would return home feeling tense. ‘What should I do?’ I would ask myself. It was terrible to be there with friends who had lost everything.

My bar is located within the security perimeter, along with 16 other businesses in the city. Since the 25th January, we have been experiencing a kind of collective mourning. We are all living in limbo, just waiting for news every day.

At first, we felt very despondent because we knew that nothing would ever be the same again. A whole section of the historic centre will disappear because the houses within 50 metres of the precipice will be demolished. You can imagine that after living in a city for 35 years, seeing it like this is a shock.

In the centre of Niscemi, there had been a wonderful dynamic thanks to a generation of young people, between the ages of 25 and 35, who had decided to stay and invest in the town. I made the same decision, after living and working abroad —in Ireland, Spain, Belgium and Portugal. I returned to build something from scratch.

Now we just have to wait. The problem is that we don’t know for how long, and it’s exhausting us. For some of us, good news arrived in the last few days: 12 of the 17 businesses that had closed —including mine— will be able to reopen. But we don’t know if the funds needed to rebuild homes or restart businesses will ever arrive.

You can imagine how stressful all this can be. In the early days, it felt as if time had stopped, as if nothing could ever return to normal. And yet, it is precisely this normality that we must seek to regain as quickly as possible.

Massimiliano