Three dead, six missing after gas blast wrecks Sicily apartment block
12 December 2021, 11:44
The building in Ravenusa was occupied by nine members of an extended family, and two visiting relatives were also on the premises.
Firefighters in Sicily were digging through the rubble of a collapsed apartment building on Sunday in the search for six missing people after an explosion apparently caused by a gas leak killed at least three, authorities said.
The building was occupied by nine members of an extended family, and two visiting relatives – a heavily pregnant woman and her husband – were also on the premises when the explosion happened in the town of Ravanusa late on Saturday, firefighters said.
Two women were rescued overnight.
One of them, 80-year-old Rosa Carmina, told La Repubblica newspaper that the lights went out suddenly “and the ceiling and floors collapsed”.
Her sister-in-law, who lived on the floor above her, also survived and was rescued from under a pile of rubble.
The explosion also collapsed three other buildings that appear to have been unoccupied, and shattered windows in three more.
“It was certainly a gas leak that created created a bubble of methane,” Salvatore Cocina, head of Sicily’s civil protection agency, told the Ansa news agency.
He said a preliminary finding indicated that the functioning of a lift may have set off the explosion, which was then fed by a gas space heater.
