ROME — The death toll from a mudslide on the Italian island of Ischia has now risen to seven.

A wave of mud and debris caused by heavy rain devastated the small town of Casamicciola Terme in the north of the island — situated off the coast from Naples — early on Saturday morning.

By Sunday evening, Italy’s government declared a state of emergency on Ischia, with five people still missing. Earlier, search teams pulled the body of a young girl from her family home as they dug through the mud for a second day.

The Italian press also reported that 13 people were injured. Some of the people initially reported missing were finally found safe, including a family with a newborn baby, Naples prefect said.

Search operations have been complicated by persistent rain and strong winds, which have also delayed the arrival of reinforcements by ferry from the mainland.

More than 200 emergency workers joined the search for the missing, while hundreds of volunteers, knee-deep in mud, cleaned up the streets of the small town.

The remains of cars and buses crushed by the violent mudslide and rockslide can be seen everywhere as excavators try to clear access to homes, cars and shops.

A first emergency package of €2 million was also agreed at an extraordinary government meeting on Sunday, said the Minister of Civil Protection Nello Musumeci.

Saturday’s landslide sent torrents of mud down the streets, knocking down trees and carrying away and denting vehicles, sometimes into the sea.

It also “buried a house” and two people were rescued from a car that had been driven into the sea, the fire service said.

Rescue services planned to evacuate 150 to 200 people to temporary accommodation, and local authorities called on islanders to stay in their homes so as not to hamper rescue operations.

Some experts have called into question a high level of urbanization and a lack of planning constraints.

“In Ischia, there is an urbanization that has hit and devastated the whole territory,” Tommaso Moramarco, director of the Institute for Research and Hydrogeological Protection, told the AGI news agency.

“When the island entered the period of mass tourism, the growth of infrastructures was exponential, suffocating all the natural elements of the territory and covering everything with cement,” denounced geologist Mario Tozzi in La Stampa, recalling the existence of tens of thousands of abusive constructions in Ischia.

Casamicciola Terme, a winter resort of 8,000 people on the lush island of Ischia near Capri, suffered an earthquake in 2017 that killed two people. It had, however, been completely destroyed by a much more powerful earthquake in the late 19th century.

Saturday’s disaster came just weeks after 11 people died in floods caused by heavy rains in east-central Italy. — Euronews