Embraced in the middle of the swollen Natisone current were three friends: Patrizia Cormos20 years old, from Campoformido (Udine), student of the Academy of Fine Arts of Udine, and Bianca Doros23 years old, recently arrived from Romania to visit her parents as well as her own fiancé slightly older, 25 years old, still originally from Romania but resident in Austria. As reported Il Messaggero VenetoAnd for them that families, rescuers and the entire Friuli-Venezia Giulia have the breathless since yesterday, Friday 31 May, when they were overwhelmed by the force of the river swollen by the rains. Since then the research has continued unabated.
The exam in the morning
The three 20-year-olds were there for a ride around lunchtime on Friday. For Patrizia it was a moment of leisure after a busy morning, at the end of the week: enrolled in the second year of the degree course in “Interior Design and Architecture” at the Academy of Fine Arts, in the morning she had taken an indispensable test to access for the «3D Modeling» exam scheduled for the July session. Shortly after midday she met with her two friends, fiancés, come to visit her. The program includes a trip to the small beach on the Natisone river, under the Roman Bridge of Premariacco, to spend some time together and take some photos. “I suggested she not go because she was tired,” Patrizia’s mother told al Veneto Messenger. “She had also gone to work the night before. But then she told me “Come on, don’t get angry, let me go” and so, in the end, I told her “Okay love, go”.
The rescue attempt
Yesterday afternoon, the first to realize that they were in difficulty was a passer-by: he heard the screams from the Roman Bridge in Premariacco, less than 15 kilometers from Udine, and raised the alarm. It was the beginning of a distressing sequence: the call to the firefighters, the reassurances to the boys who tried to resist the force of the water and a group of people who they filmed with the mobile phone – footage seasoned by comments reproachfully – while the level of the river saliva quickly reaching the knees of the young people. The three friends were locked in a desperate embrace to try to counteract the power of the water and in the meantime the firefighters were trying to save them: they lengthened a stairs above the Natisone river, launching ropes. The boys tried to grab them but they didn’t make it. And the current dragged them away.
The race against time and a cell phone signal
Since the three friends were carried away by the current, there has been a coming and going of helicopters and rescuers on the river between Premariacco and Manzano, between firefighters with divers and the 118 helicopter rescue waiting. For the public works councilor of Premariacco Antonio Michelutti «there is always the hope of finding them alive, but knowing the river the more time passes, the more complicated it becomes to recover them. Full of this size they are not unusual, but I don’t understand why they were there in those conditions. The flood doesn’t come from nowhere.” On Saturday morning, around 8, the rescuers were still at work: «The array of vehicles that have been combing the Premariacco gorge towards Paderno since the first light of dawn was impressive. During the night a signal from a cell phone but they had to suspend the search until they could descend or ascend the river. These are decisive hours.”
