How are Rome's disappearance threatened by mysterious pits opening in the city

During this year alone, some 44 dens of erosion have been dug throughout the city of Rome. The Italian capital's sacrifices are made from a new pit every two-three days. They normally measure a room, a few feet wide, and a few feet deep. But in February of this year, these pits absorbed six cars into underground canals, after removing 50m from Livio Andronico Street, causing some buildings to be evacuated.

This is not a new phenomenon. Since 2010, Rome has had 90 such holes a year. In 2013, there were 104. The year 2018 seems to be going through that record. Clearly, the problem is escalating: roads are starting to look like cheese with holes “Emental”, while everyone in Italy is wondering why the earth, as the Jewish prophet Jesse says, “is wavering as a drunken man”.

Some blame the rain. Rome's inhabitants have been taught to wear sunglasses throughout the year, but the rains of the past six months have been the most common in history. Many of them have been called melodramatic “water bomb”. In September of last year, flooded subways were closed, as rivers flowed on moving stairs, and stations became like shower rooms, flowing from cracked ceilings. Thousands of cars dived into the water to the mirrors.

In November, this was a more serious sign that things had gotten worse that Lazio's fight against the Udinese was postponed due to torrential rains. A week ago there were new flooding in the subway. Last month, Italy has had 141% higher than normal rainfall.

Rain is a problem because of city geology. Most of Rome is built on soft layers of soil, such as the lily fields of the Tibet River. This means that water removes small deposits that give ground stability. The mild earth adds not only earthquake shake (by and Colosseum lacking south) but also the vibrations coming from city traffic, causing what the president of the Lazio geologists' association calls “land formation”. It's like waving a sieve of water and clay under asphalt. Soon the water will be washed away and will remain a wet mass, such as gelatin, which must sustain all traffic on top.

The added water comes, not from the rainfall, but from the cracked underground infrastructure. Ancient pipelines, such as “Vergin”, which supplies the “Travi”, continue to be used today. Because of the leaks, 50% of the water from Lakes of Lacio to the fountains of Rome's inhabitants is lost along the way. Many of the city's sewers are so old that they are still made of bricks and cracked tiles. In addition, under the city are some 20 square miles [30 sq km] of tunnels, cavitons, catacombs, and qualms, which do not help the situation at all.

Rome, February 2018

The municipal council has deteriorated the situation in numerous ways: it is always corrupt and often incompetent. They can't even buy a green Christmas tree this year. The tender process for repair and reconstruction of roads drags on for years because the bureaucracy in Rome is turbulent. When a contract is finally granted, companies make the roads worse because they try to save, or because they want to continue to have jobs. Meanwhile, the municipality receives 4,000 claims of compensation annually from Insurance, mainly for car damage and bone fractures caused by the work.

Rome's inhabitants deal with this problem with their characteristic mood. They're laughing that Honda has opened a spring test center in Rome because the city has the worst roads in the world. Christmas bluefinch was named “gebarak”, and a cartoon published last week said that scattered holes in the city could stop Mass and his friends from visiting the Barcelona team (so, Rome wins, anyway).

But underground pits serve as a serious reminder that extreme weather, mixed with procedural disabilities, can have fatal consequences. A month ago, Genova Mayor Marta Vinci was sentenced to five years in prison for failing to take security during the 2011 floods when four women and two children died. In January 2017, 29 people died after snowfall and earthquakes created an avalanche that destroyed a hotel in Rigapiano, Abroco. Warnings had long been ignored, and rescue efforts were so slow that one of the victims seemed to have survived under the snow for 40 hours before his death.

It may not be right to blame the emergency staff or politicians for those deaths. An Italian ironic statement mocks the habit of blaming politicians for everything: “Be rain: thief government! ” From these craters created in Rome, it is clear that events that once seemed extraordinary have now become normal. Livorno had 256 milliliters of rain in one night in 2017, which had dropped in total for eight months. The subsequent floods left eight people dead. In Messina, 37 people died in 2009; 13 died in Liguria during the next two years; 18 in Sardinia in 2013.

After many earthquakes in Le Marche this month, the feeling that the underground layers in Italy are no longer strong. Not only because of earthquakes (the earthquakes have claimed 669 lives in the last 10 years). It also has to do with topography: The steep, waved mountains, like Rome's asphalt, are often given gravity and take along roads and homes. At a time when the weather gets more extreme, the earth is unlikely to recover soon.

 Tobias Jones, The Guardian