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.
