“I need to read otherwise I’ll get emotional”. The national commander of the Fire Brigade Carlo dall’Oppio is an honorary citizen of Ravenna. This morning in an Alighieri theater packed with authorities and students of the Ravenna schools has received recognition from the mayor of Ravenna And retraced the dramatic days of the flood in Romagna when he was regional commander of the corps. “I experienced that emergency in the field – he says – and I have everything, every image, clearly in mind. The scenarios were different. There are many fronts but also a lot of energy put into play in the emergency.”
The commitment of the Fire Brigade in those days can also be seen by the numbers: in 16 days, those of the first emergency, 38 thousand man-days of work, 10,259 interventions, half of which in the province of Ravenna, 677 men and 316 vehicles employed. “A lot of work but the most beautiful aspect was never missing: the gratitude in the eyes of those we saved. We were truly all from Ravenna, all from Emilia-Romagna”.
“In those hours we all felt a little lost – recalls mayor of Ravenna, Michele De Pascale –. If we held out it’s because so many people came from all over Italy and Europe to help us. When you feel alone and see that someone comes to help you, it fills your heart and gives you the strength and energy to carry on.” What happened, the mayor continued, no one had ever experienced. “And now you – he remarked, addressing the kids sitting in the boxes – have the duty to preserve his memory. We faced an emergency but prevention is achieved by paying attention to our territory”
The honorary citizenship conferred on Dall’oppio has precisely this function, continues De Pascale: to preserve the memory. “It’s a recognition we give to the person, to a body, to a feeling, to a system. The effort was inhumane. You could hear every Italian accent. I saw the firefighters looking for a body for several hours under a collapsed embankment. But there was a system around them, which worked: alongside these men, there were uniforms of all colours. Thus it was possible to save hundreds of lives. And this was stronger than water”.
“I hope this thing never has to happen again – he adds the commander of the Allura Fire Brigade, Luca Manselli – but if it were to happen I would like to do it with you.”
“From those days I remember the distraught image of the mayors, distraught but on the spot – continues the prefect, Castrese de Rosa -. This is the Italy of mayors, in the front row, in the trenches. We didn’t distinguish between night and days, when we feared that Ravenna too could flood. These are the emotions I carry inside me. I cried too. At 65 years old. When they told me, for example, that 400 people were missing in Faenza. I thought of a huge tragedy. And instead they were tracked down one by one and saved. This is what the mayors and the police did.”
