On November 7, ’94, on the front page of The print, Nuto Revelli wrote: «Three days of torrential rain, and disaster strikes. The mountain torrents go crazy, the water slides as if on a mirror inclined towards the plain, the rivers not only overflow their banks, but with the impact force they accumulate they take away everything they encounter, injuring people and the hills. This is what is happening in our home, in the provinces of Turin, Cuneo, Asti, Alessandria, Vercelli: landslides, roads and bridges swallowed up. And what’s worse, the dead and missing are approximately counted. In an emergency situation all we have to do is dedicate ourselves to rescue, but we must do a simple, elementary reflection. We are paying for the collapse of the mountain, the general collapse of the territory. The mistakes of the past are paid for. It was obvious that the plain would also pay for the abandonment of the mountains. Indeed, especially the plain. Having superficially transformed thousands of mountain people, specialists in land maintenance, into general workers was an unforgivable mistake. One of the many mistakes of the period of wild industrialization. The hope is that this lesson will not be repeated. The sun will return. Roads and bridges will be rebuilt. But we will have to emerge from our usual ignorance. Either we will learn to respect the territory, or this story will continue to repeat itself.”
Thirty years have passed since then. From the terrible flood that brought Lower Piedmont to its knees on 5 and 6 November 1994. The provinces of Cuneo, Asti and Alessandria were bent (but not broken) by the fury of the Tanaro and its tributaries. From the anger of the hills which, torn by deep scratches, slipped to the ground. The revolt of nature. Hundreds of bridges destroyed. Thousands of homes, workshops, shops, schools, retirement homes, companies, factories, professional offices violated by slime and stones. Fields, vegetable gardens and vineyards disappeared. Kilometers and kilometers of roads cancelled. And the memories of everyday life, torn from homes, ended up lost forever in the brown mush that covered much, if not everything. Above all, however, there were those 29 crosses planted between water and mud, the 29 deaths in the Cuneo area alone (there were 2,226 displaced people). Like Riccardo, just 5 years old. Adriano and Giuseppe, father and fourteen-year-old son. Livio, swallowed by the darkness while trying to save a stranger from the flood. Of them, one of the mayors of the time, little heroes in the flood, Michele Chiecchio of Clavesana, said: «We must never forget those deaths. We will rebuild the bridges, no one will give us their lives back.”
In the Cuneo area everything has been rebuilt, except the Ceva-Bra railway which the administrators renounced, to divert the money to the more necessary completion of the Tanaro valley floor road. And if anyone has forgotten, in view of the 30th anniversary there are those who intend to dust off that memory. «In memory of the human lives shattered and to pay homage to a still open wound – says Luca Robaldo, president of the Province – in recent days I invited the mayors of the main municipalities involved in the tragedy to Cuneo to a working table to plan common initiatives . The Province intends to create an operational management, aimed at coordinating the many events that the individual Municipalities are planning. The aim is to facilitate initiatives, placing them within a single institutional framework.” And again: «The proposal for provincial coordination was welcomed, as was the proposal to propose common awareness-raising initiatives traveling across the territory and dedicated to younger people. The working table offered the opportunity to remember personal and collective events and to underline the importance of the many works to secure the territory carried out in the following years which, together with a new culture of prevention, allowed the damage to be contained of subsequent floods”
