6 February 2017

Bova Marina – an interesting retaining wall failure video

Posted by Dave Petley

Bova Marina – an interesting retaining wall failure video

According to Wikipedia, Bova Marina is “is a comune (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria in the Italian region Calabria, located about 120 kilometres (75 mi) southwest of Catanzaro and about 30 kilometres  southeast of Reggio Calabria”.  A video appeared on Youtube yesterday showing a rather spectacular retaining wall failure, which appears to be driven by a landslide occurring on the slope behind:

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There is very little detail about this event on the internet at present.  An article on strill.it, in Italian, suggests that significant distress was observed in this wall back in September, and that the final collapse occurred at about 10 am on 4th February. The road, SS106, was closed off before the collapse at Bova Marina occurred.

I am unsure as to the exact location of this event, but the site shown in Google Earth below looks like the most probably candidate.  Can anyone confirm?

Bova Marina

A possible site of the Bova Marina retaining wall failure in Italy, via Google Earth