The catastrophic rains and deadly landslide that devastated parts of the island of Ischia, in Italy, on Saturday, Nov. 26, took a long-distance toll on San Pedro, the hillside port community where so many Ischians settled in years past.
“We came from an island and we needed to see the ocean,” said Carmela Funiciello, who arrived in San Pedro as a 20-year-old newlywed from Ischia in 1970. “That’s why people stayed here.”
Today, Ischia is a sister city of San Pedro, where close generational and ongoing family ties are still near the surface.
In San Pedro, Funiciello said, the Italian island natives found a “little Ischia.” With a hillside rising up from the harbor dotted with homes, the Mediterranean climate and lush greenery — and the fishing, of course — San Pedro seemed like home.
So news of the weather disaster, which has taken eight lives and left several missing, had many in tears.
A 3-week-old infant who was among the dead appears to be related to a second cousin of Funiciello’s mother, the San Pedro woman said on Wednesday.
And so, at 6 p.m. Friday, Dec. 2, a candlelight vigil will be held in Peppertree Plaza, at Harbor Boulevard and Sixth Street. The small park recently was designated as Piazza Miramare, the cornerstone of San Pedro’s newly minted Little Italy district.
Organized by the Little Italy of Los Angeles Association, with the aid of Los Angeles City Councilmember Joe Buscaino and The Ischia San Pedro Los Angeles Corporation, the vigil will also raise emergency relief funds for families impacted by the disaster. A Go Fund Me page is now up and running.
“The closest you can get to Ischia (in the U.S.) is San Pedro,” Buscaino said. “When Ischia hurts, San Pedro hurts and we have to do all we can as an Italian community since we all have close family ties.”
Buscaino said the vigil will include prayer and reflection.
The island has a history of natural disasters but what befell the area over the weekend was especially devastating. Heavy rains caused a chunk of Mount Epomeo to crash down before dawn on Saturday, gaining speed as it surged into the populated port town of Casamicciola, where it demolished buildings and carried cars and buses into the sea. Dozens of homes were inundated by mud and water, leaving more than 200 residents homeless.
Mount Epomeo is the highest mountain on the volcanic island of Ischia, in the Gulf of Naples. The mountain towers above the rest of the island in Italy.
“These are still my people, though I am so far away,” Funiciello said of her own emotions, recalling how Ischians were drawn to San Pedro in decades past.
It was the “poor fishermen who helped to build this town,” Funiciello said of San Pedro.
As the generations grew, she said, Ischians married Croatians and Mexicans and people from all cultures who put down roots in the Harbor Area.
“Our families enlarged themselves,” Funiciello said. “By looking at the faces, you don’t always realize someone is from Ischia; it’s just a joy to know we’re in so many cultures now.”
But the Ischian tie, she said, is never forgotten.
“In every 10th house,” she said of San Pedro still, “there is an Ischian family (tie).”
Ischia is a sister city of San Pedro thanks to the efforts in the early 2000s by Funiciello and then-Councilmember Janice Hahn, and many, including Funiciello and her family, return to their homeland annually or whenever they can.
“I went any time I could,” Funiciello said. “I just could not stay away.
“It’s our homeland, we were born and raised there,” added Funiciello, a homemaker who also worked part-time as a language instructor. “And we are suffering almost like the people who are over there.”
She and her husband, a maritime engineer, had four children. They still live close to family in a San Pedro house — with an ocean view, of course.
“I’ll be on a call with the mayor of Ischia this afternoon,” Buscaino said on Wednesday, “to offer our condolences as a city.”
If you go
What: Candlight vigil. Ciao Bella Mobile Pizzeria will donate all proceeds from the evening to the relief fund
When: 6 p.m. Friday, Dec. 2
Where: Peppertree Plaza, Harbor Boulevard and Sixth Street
To donate to Ischia relief: gofundme.com/f/Ischiarelief