The adverse weather conditions with a rather strong southerly wind and a strong undertow for several hours forced the closure of the two landing places in Tremestieri. All the ships that transfer heavy vehicles across the strait on a daily basis have been diverted to the docks in the city center and in the San Francesco harbor. The effect is of course that trucks will also pass through the city to get to the highway or to board ferries. It will then be verified in the next few hours whether the siroccata has brought such a quantity of sand into the port that it could still complicate the landing of ships, even when the wave motion has reduced. The feeling of the experts is that there should be no accumulations.
The reaction
For the general secretary of Uiltrasporti Messina, Antonino Di Mento, what happened “forcefully turns the spotlight back on problems now known but never resolved: the chronic cover-ups in the port of Tremestieri, the serious inconveniences for port workers, the critical issues linked to the safety of the city and the absence of clear answers on the regional authorization for the movement of the sand masses”.
The state of the work on the new port is also causing further concern: “It is no longer understandable – underlines Di Mento – at what point the interventions really are and what the certain times are for completion of a strategic infrastructure for Messina and for the entire transport system in the Strait”.
All these issues will be at the center of a meeting already formally requested of the President of the Strait Port System Authority, which will be held in the next few days, in order to obtain concrete answers and make the necessary decisions.
“The city, the workers and operators in the sector – concludes Di Mento – can no longer afford stopgap solutions and postponements: we need clear choices, structural interventions and certain deadlines”.