A 55-year-old man who became lost while searching for mushrooms in the woods of Fiaiano on Ischia was found in good health and brought safely home after an evening search by firefighters.
The man lost his orientation as darkness approached and was unable to find the path home. After he failed to return, his wife raised the alarm, prompting searches by firefighters from the Ischia station in dense and difficult woodland.
Rescuers located him in or near the Cretaio woodland and accompanied him out of the forest. He returned home without reported physical consequences.
Telephone contact assisted the search. According to the reports, the man remained in telephone contact even though he lacked an internet connection, and his intermittently working mobile phone helped rescuers narrow the area. Firefighters' team 11B found him around 18:30 in the Cretaio woods, also guided in the final phase by the sound of the rescuers' voices.
The reports describe Fiaiano as the area where he entered the woods and Cretaio as the area where he was found. The exact route he followed between the two locations was not specified, and the precise time the alarm was raised and the search began was not consistently reported.
The episode underlines how quickly orientation can become difficult in Ischia's interior woodland once daylight fades. Dense vegetation, uneven paths and falling darkness made movement and searching harder, both for the missing man and for the rescue team.
It also shows the practical value of maintaining voice contact during a woodland emergency. Even without an internet connection, telephone contact and an intermittently functioning mobile phone assisted the operation, alongside direct voice contact between the man and firefighters in the woods.
