Volunteer, religion and music teacher in elementary school, the journalist’s vocation. During the flood, Mattia Brienza kept the community together Modigliana providing everyone with the primary good: the information. Before creating a unique router with his number to guarantee the wi-fi network, then taking to the streets to shout into a megaphone what was happening, what needed to be done and what not. Mattia spent the whole night between 16 and 17 May answering questions from hundreds of people. Early in the morning he goes to the centre, they had set up a reception point, and informs that thethe only place where there is connection is the parish. After an hour in front of the church router there is a very long queue of citizens, municipality staff, the technical office, pharmacists asking for urgent medicines, civil protection. «There must have been three hundred of them. No one knew how to handle it, but the more devices you connected, the less it worked, and the connection was used for rescue operations. Then I created a single hotspot with my number with which I sent messages for everyone.”
“I had confirmation that communication is important“
However, a way was needed to provide basic information in homes. At that point Mattia thinks about the megaphone, which he kept in the cellar, a souvenir of his grandfather. He charges himself with the car’s cigarette lighter. He ties it to the roof and goes to the municipality to make himself available. «As in the scene of Don Camillo and Peppone I left. I walked slowly through the streets and always repeated the same phrases: ‘The roads are blocked, don’t go out, don’t take your car, petrol stations are reserved for emergency vehicles only’, etc. People looked out of the windows and thanked me, even moved. But it’s not like I was saying very reassuring things, eh, and then I’m nobody, but yes, I had the confirmation that communication is important.”
After the hotspot and the megaphone, something else was needed, the Modigliana situation had to be made known to the media, because journalists only went to the larger municipalities in those days. So Mattia turns on the video camera, tells the story, and sends it to the local TV stations, on May 18, his reports from Modigliana, which air son national TV. «If I think about it today I was a bit crazy in those days, but what comes to mind most is the desperately needed the information we had. Even now there are people who meet me and they tell me thank you for sending even just a message, old and young”. This year, Mattia’s life has returned to what it was before, he continues to be a volunteer and teacher of religion and music at Bagnacavallo elementary schools. However, that morning of May 16th, he had found the house and a few months ago he moved to Faenza to a nice apartment in a flooded building in the historic centre. He also brought the megaphone with him, just in case.
