12 December 2021

Three dead, six missing after gas blast wrecks Sicily apartment block

12 December 2021

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.

Italian firefighters and rescuers search for survivors among the rubble of a collapsed building in Ravanusa (Italian Firefighters Vigili del Fuoco/AP) (AP)

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.

Two women were rescued from the collapsed building in Ravanusa, Sicily, overnight (Italian Firefighters Vigili del Fuoco/AP) (AP)

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.

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