Another collapse along the provincial road 45 in Massa San Nicola, in the same stretch already affected, last January 10, by a chasm that had swallowed up a car, causing the driver to be injured. The episode, which occurred yesterday afternoon, puts the spotlight back on a situation that residents now define as unsustainable.
After the first collapse, that segment of roadway was the subject of restoration work and reopened to alternating one-way traffic. Measures which, in light of yet another failure, appear insufficient today. «A nightmare that seems to have no end», comments Francesco Berenato, a doctor resident in Massa Santa Lucia and member of the Committee of the Four Masses.
«What would have happened if a car or motorcycle had passed by at that moment? The tragedy that occurred months ago could have turned into something much more serious”, he adds. Despondency is growing among citizens, accompanied by a widespread sense of institutional abandonment. The territory, fragile and already marked by hydrogeological criticalities, would require – according to residents – structural interventions and no longer temporary solutions. The danger of the stretch, in reality, had already been highlighted in recent months. Following a Commission session held on 6 June 2025, the president of the sixth Municipality Francesco Pagano sent a note accompanied by photographic documentation to the Metropolitan City, collecting reports from the area. The document clearly described a depression in the road surface accompanied by the appearance of cracks, phenomena that worsened after atmospheric precipitation. That communication requested urgent intervention at km 11 of the provincial road, together with the activation of constant monitoring to verify any movements of the road surface over time. The fear, spelled out in black and white, was that of a possible worsening of the situation to the point of causing a sinking towards the valley. An alarm which, in light of what happened yesterday, takes on even greater weight today and raises questions about the timeliness and effectiveness of the actions taken. Sunday 3 May, at 6.30 pm, new assembly of the Committee of the Four Masse in the space outside the former school of Massa Santa Lucia, in which we will discuss this situation which has now become unsustainable; the meeting, they say, will be open to all citizens and institutions.
A few days ago, the Messina writer Franco Genovese shared a post on his social page, taken from his book “Messina, the city that allowed itself to be robbed”: «On the hills of Castanea and Quattro Masse not only the roads are collapsing. An idea of citizenship collapses. For years they have been telling us that the money isn’t there, then you discover that the money is there, still as cold stones. The Region allocates millions for the internal areas, 50% advance, work immediately. And meanwhile, on our hills, the streets are collapsing, the houses are collapsing, the lives are collapsing. People go down to the valley as best they can, every day, as if it were normal to risk their lives to go to school or work. It is an architecture of power that never collapses, because it thrives on delays, opinions, rebounds, “it’s not my turn”. It’s not the character of the Sicilians. It is the character of the system. Yet, as always, the crack comes from below: a community that no longer wants to be a periphery of itself. The light enters from there, from a tiny hole, not from a million-dollar ad.”