The only body recovered so far from the mud of Ischia is that of Eleonora Sirabella, 31 years old. She lived with her husband Salvatore Impagliazzo, still missing, in the Rarone area, i.e. in the upper part of Casamicciola, not far below the point from which the landslide was generated. Their house was overwhelmed by mud and her body was allegedly dragged for a hundred meters to Piazza Maio, where it was later found. She worked as a shop assistant, her husband embarked on ships. Rescuers found the body in the early afternoon.
“They showed me the bag to see if I recognized it. Not the face, they told me it wasn’t really the case to show me”, says the Casamicciola parish priest, don Gino Ballirano, who as a point of reference for the community has collaborated throughout the day with the rescuers, helping them verify the names of the missing and indicating the inhabitants of the buildings most damaged by the mud.
Also in Rarone, in a house very close to that of Eleonora Sirabella and her husband, lives a family of five who have not given any news since yesterday morning. Gianluca Monti, Valentina Castagna, two thirty-year-olds, have three children, the youngest of whom is 6 years old. She fears the worst. The couple had formerly run a fruit stand and more recently the husband was working as a cook and the wife stayed at home raising her children.
One of the missing persons would be a Bulgarian immigrant. Nikolina Blagova called Nina. She is 58 years old and just last Thursday she became an Italian citizen. Her partner is abroad, in Berlin, and she, after being with him in Germany until a couple of weeks ago, had returned to Ischia to get her identity card. Her idea was to leave and return to her man, originally from Ischia. In the past she had been a carer for some elderly people on the island.