Alarm was raised in the center of Cagliari due to a strong smell of gas that was noticed by residents on several streets in the area in the early afternoon.
The pungent odor was so intense in the Piazza Garibaldi area that, as a precaution, the Riva school was evacuated. The young children attending the preschool—the only one still open around 3:30 PM—were urgently moved outside and remained on the steps to wait for their parents, under constant surveillance by school staff.
The smell of gas reached the Santa Gilla area, then spread to the entire western part of the city.
Several firefighter teams scoured the port area to try to trace the source. However, it's currently unclear what triggered the cloud that engulfed part of the capital.