A year has now passed since 16 May 2023, the date on which some areas of Forlì were submerged by the flooding of the rivers that cross it. We students of the Mercurial school saw the consequences of those days up close and over the course of the year we decided to dedicate part of our time to studying the history of the territory and the waters that flow through it to reflect on what happened. “Yet it is the same water – writes Sergio Spada in the volume ‘Along the rivers, on the embankment’ –, the same water that overwhelms, spreading mud and debris and erasing things and memories. The same water that guarantees us crops and food, that gives us life.” If we go back in the history of our territory there are numerous human interventions to reclaim the lands and make them cultivable and habitable. Throughout the Middle Ages, the reasons that pushed the people of Forlì to implement changes to the waterways were many: water supply as the driving force of the mills, the defense of the city and obviously limiting the damage caused by floods and overflows of the numerous rivers.
During the 18th century there was a new modification to the route of the Ronco and Montone rivers; However, we would have to wait until the following centuries to see Romagna as a laboratory of water reclamation and regulation techniques. In 1947 the construction of the 135 km long Emiliano Romagnolo Canal was one of the most important results of Italian hydraulic engineering. Over the years, however, interventions on the territory have been increasingly important and have changed its appearance. All this information has made us understand that sometimes man, albeit with functional intentions, modifies the territory without carrying out a long-term predictive analysis. Given what happened in May 2023, extremely urgent construction sites were activated right from the start. Heated debates emerged about how the catastrophe, the flooding of tens of thousands of homes and the deaths of some residents could have been avoided. In the following months we mainly talked about prevention, that is, what was not done or what was not sufficient to make the area safe. Surely the embankments that collapsed during this flood are the result of the great reclamations of the early twentieth century, which had the objective of recovering as much space as possible for agriculture, or of the interventions over the centuries that changed the course of the rivers. Perhaps we should give rivers more space to flow, which however does not mean leaving them free to overflow, but rather solving the problem of excessive canalisation by respecting the natural path of the waters. Cleaning waterways is also important as it would allow the water to flow downstream.
Of course, when we talk about ‘securing’ territories, we do not take into account the fact that with the extreme climatic events recorded in recent years it is rather difficult to predict their proportions, perhaps it would be necessary to carry out continuous monitoring of critical issues, develop a mix of interventions, never let your guard down to prevent this from happening again. The strength of solidarity helped us to recover: Hajar went to interview Carla, the owner of the ‘Block notes’ stationery shop who, following the flood, had to move from her large shop in via Sapinia to viale Bologna. “My shop was completely flooded and I lost a lot of materials, but I received help from friends, relatives and volunteers and this was a relief.”
Leonardo says that his grandfather Giuseppe, owner of the historic Partisani mill, is aware that his business will never be able to return to the way it once was because the little compensation received is not enough to put all the machinery back in place; However, Giuseppe remembers that in those days he received the help of many people and this gave him hope again. The flood experience taught us that in the face of great difficulties, communities must help each other, but that to live safely it is necessary to know, plan and take care of the environment in which we live.
Classes 3ªA and 3ªB
