Patrizia, Bianca and Cristian. From youngest to oldest, 20 to 25 years old.
It is a massacre of young people that now seems to have taken place in Premariacco (Udine), due to the sudden flood of the Natisone river.
Almost 36 hours after their disappearance, the rescuers have now lost all hope of finding the young people still alive, but obviously they will continue their searches until they have returned their bodies to their families. The relatives arrived on site this morning and since then have been silently watching the continuous checks by the firefighters and Civil Protection technicians.
A precedent of drowning in the Friulian stream, however, raises concern: an expert diver, who died in the area, was found, by chance, only two years later. Because the watercourse has numerous gorges in which one can become inexorably entangled.
ANSA Agency Three young people missing due to the flood of the Natisone in Friuli, the desperate embrace then the flood overwhelmed them – News – Ansa.it A boy and two girls were dragged away while rescuers were trying to reach them. They have a presumed age between 20 and 25 years: they could be originally from Romania, but resident in Friuli. Searches underway with helicopters and divers (ANSA)The small army of rescuers hopes, however, that the temperamental Natisone will confirm his nature: just as he suddenly swells, he deflates just as quickly. Returning to having small flow rates, like those scarce 4 cubic meters per second that it guaranteed on Friday morning, which became 250 only a few hours later, when the boys had imprudently ventured into its riverbed to take some souvenir photos. There were many things to celebrate: the test just passed by Patrizia, enrolled in the second year of the Academy of Fine Arts; an exam finished just before 12, just in time to get in the car with friends and reach “Premariacco beach”, also taking advantage of a sudden – and unexpected – clearing of the sky.
There was a family reunion to celebrate for Bianca, who had only been in Italy for three days to visit her parents, whom she hadn’t seen for a long time; not to mention her reunion with her boyfriend Cristian, who after a stopover in Austria with her brother had rushed to Friuli to be with her. A moment of joy to share and immortalize with your mobile phone. But no reckless selfies: they had chosen the spring colors of Natisone as a backdrop. Without dealing with her terrible dark side. In a few minutes the torrent, swollen upstream by exceptional rainfall, began to rise. Nothing that seemed that tragic. The boys had followed a path that leads to the center of the riverbed.
From that position they saw their way back to shore blocked by a first stretch of water. In that moment there was their last chance of salvation. “They were dry – remembers the driver of the municipal school bus that passed on the bridge above – but already in a panic. It was clear that they didn’t know what to do. Only a stretch of a couple of meters of water separated them from the embankment, bottom at most up to their torso height. They didn’t feel like wading, they retreated to the center of the river bed.” There they waited for help, in the sadly famous embrace. The rest are tears of desperation from the relatives, assisted by a psychologist, and the wait for around forty specialized technicians, including divers and river workers, to be able to recover something more than the purse and the mobile phone that Patrizia had used to launch the SOS and found today thanks to a drone equipped with a system that captures cell phone signals. It is the only success of a sad day in which the list of victims from river accidents has increased by one: today the body of a 67-year-old pensioner was found along the Guà river, in the Trissino area ( Vicenza). He had disappeared yesterday evening, his car was found by the firefighters near the bed of the Poscola, a stream in Castelgomberto (Vicenza), which was flowing at guard level, also in this case due to heavy rainfall.
‘The tantrums of Natisone’
In the area where the boys were overwhelmed there are several depressions created by past floods. The small road that goes down to the river enters next to a small platform and, shortly after, continuing towards the bridge, the level drops significantly, and then rises again and finds itself on the hill. It was there, on a sort of hill, that the three boys decided to stop, as described by some residents of Premariacco who know the area and the “tantrums” of the Natisone river well.
Unfortunately, within a few minutes this basin filled with water and they would not have been able to cross it because they would have been dragged by the current which immediately became impetuous, explains another resident. For which instead, “rightly” the two girls and the young man called and waited for help. “Unfortunately the level rose exceptionally in just a few minutes before the firefighters were able to prepare a system to hook them up.”
The Natisone is a difficult river: a few dozen meters downstream there is a point where the water, even in normal conditions, reaches 15 meters in depth and there are currents and eddies that drag along the bottom and get stuck between the boulders of the gorge. Therefore, “the three boys must have been unaware of the danger: only the residents know about the Natisone’s tantrums. Yesterday morning, when they went down to the riverbed to take photographs, there were no warnings of what would happen, the access was clear and the water, low and still calm, flowed only on the opposite side to where they were”
The river reached 250 cubic meters per second
The water flows of the Natisone river yesterday morning and afternoon were made known. These are fundamental data to understand the exceptional nature of the event which involved the three boys overwhelmed by the flood.
The numbers refer to measurements upstream of the site of the tragedy; the river takes about twenty minutes to reach the site of the tragedy. At 11.30 the water flow rate was still only 20 cubic meters per second, within a very wide bed. At 1pm, that is when the boys were already on the riverbed, the flow rate suddenly became 135 cubic meters per second. At 1.35pm the boys were hit by the flood and raised the alarm at the same time as numerous passers-by.
At 3pm the Natisone’s capacity had reached 250 cubic metres, and the desperate – and dangerous – searches of the firefighters with boats and the diving group were already underway.
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