Today exactly 28 years have passed since the flood of 19 June 1996. On the occasion of the twenty-eighth anniversary also the combination of the day of the week, Wednesday, in which the meteorological disaster occurred which caused 14 victims, of which 12 in the hamlet of Cardoso: Giulia Macchiarini (4 years), Elena Bianchini (30 years), Manuela Luisi (32 years), Graziana Luisi (40 years), Marino Pieruccioni (72 years), Alma Santarelli (73 years), Margherita Vincenti (76 years), Norma Santarelli (54 years), Renata Marcucci (67 years), Valentino Guidi (72 years), Alessio Ricci (9 years), Valeria Guidi (43 years), Isola Frati (68 years), Mario Cavani (53 years). The names of the last two victims are not inhabitants of Cardoso: Isola Frati is an elderly woman who died that day in Fornovolasco, while the body of Mario Amos Cavani, a plumber from Fiumetto, was found on Viale Apua. All the bodies of the 12 victims were dragged downstream and found in the Versilia plain near Pontersosso, except that of Valeria Guidi, who was not found despite meticulous searches which lasted for a long time. Like August 12, 1944, June 19, 1996 is also a fundamental date engraved in the memory of the Municipality of Stazzema. If 12 August 1944 recalls the barbarity committed by the Nazi-fascists during the Second World War and the warning to consciences never to allow space again to the flattery of ideologies that trample on the values of the human person, 19 June 1996 for Stazzema and for Versilia it is the devastating warning that climate change is not an unreal bogeyman but is instead a dramatically real and more looming threat than ever. There is now an awareness that extreme events such as that of June ’96 could be repeated in a period of time that will no longer have that secular cadence due to which memory becomes clouded and vigilance is lowered. Tomorrow’s commemorative initiatives want to remind everyone that the tragedy of June 19th 28 years ago is not “a thing of the past” but is a lurking meteorological phenomenon with all its elements, water, wind, snow, hail and electric discharges, which it can be repeated to cause ever greater mourning and material devastation with a temporal cyclicity which unfortunately will be much lower than that known up to now, i.e. that which is commonly defined within living memory, of which the inhabitants have no memory, as it was the flood of ’96. Unfortunately this will no longer be the case, and from this we must draw full conviction and consequent preventive behavior. As regards the personal experience I had with the flood event and everything it caused, I must recognize that that terrible day allowed me to verify my behavior in such critical situations. I have written a lot about the flood and reconstruction, I have contested a lot, I have swallowed a lot. For example, I worked to ensure that the historic wall of the Chioderia della Regia Magona in Ruosina was not demolished to transform it into a monument to the flood. I insisted that the destroyed intakes be rebuilt to restore the lost anthropic memory to the waterways but also a better opportunity to recreate environments that facilitate the reproduction of river fauna, especially that of the fair trout, which has now disappeared from the streams of Alta Versilia. Among my frustrated attempts, which however prevented the pools in the Torre di Carbonaia area from being transformed into a car park in the historic heart of the village, I want to remember the insistent plea to reactivate the millpond and the ancient wash houses, hydraulic artefacts which would make the tourist and landscape fortune of any town in Trentino but not of a fraction of Stazzema. I would have liked to see the artifacts of the stone jambs and thresholds of the Cardoso del Palazzetto preserved and to see them displayed in the small flood museum space that was to be created in the recovered building. I have never believed in the promises that the bridges built temporarily to reach the inhabited areas of Tappi and Orti on the right bank of the Mulina Torrent would be rebuilt at a later time. 28 years have passed and the two crossings are in a worse structural temporary condition than the one in which they were built. In short, I got busy and I was with the people who did not find attention for the critical issues they had to face, such as that of removing as soon as possible the debris and tree trunks that the owners of the house of Bacchus had, the first residents who were evacuated to Stazzema on the morning of 19 June 1996 following a landslide which slipped into the bed of the Robbio or Robbia Canal (Rave Canal) and caused the water of the canal to overflow along the stairs of the house and onto the square. Fortunately, the mass of water mostly returned to the underlying riverbed. Only a small stream of water began to flow in the direction of the Ceppo houses and then, having invaded the provincial road, it spread the water further towards the Marginetta and the Lencio Meo, so much so that it was necessary to place my letter in front of the door of this house. house, two providential sand bags that the builders had not used and thus prevent the water from penetrating the door and pouring into the floors of the ground floor, which are at a lower level than the street level.
This is in the morning.
In the early afternoon, coinciding with the tragedy that was taking place in Cardoso, the Castellina landslides slipped into the watercourses, causing the Picignana Fosso to overflow in the Ponte di Culerchio area, and then two landslides detached from the woods under the Sanctuary of the Madonnina (right side of the Mulina stream) and one from the side from which the path towards the Pietrelle quarry departed (left bank of the Mulina). The three landslides created a flood of water which within a minute rose up to cross the Orti di Carbonaia bridge and just as quickly the water broke the barrier that had formed in the narrows and the large lake was sucked in as if it had found a small swallow, destroying the outlet and part of the historic Distendino ironworks. Five hundred meters further downstream it destroyed the Ponte di Tomarlo and filled with material the stretch of the Mulina stream that goes from Presa Pocai to Ponte di Tomarlo up to the road level. The jump of more than four meters of the grip had become a wand of not even 50 cm. I witnessed all of this.
Among the pieces that the flood pushed me to write, I would like to mention a few: “Finimondo alle Mulina” (Published in Versilia Oggi in July 1996) “Quell’impossibile dì massimo di cielo” (text collected in the photographic book With my heart in my eyes by A. Luisi, E. Leonardi and C. Paolicchi, year 1997), “Cardoso and its thousand-year history” and “The remains of the historic building of the Regia Magona demolished” (respectively classified in 1st and 3rd place in the Award journalistic Versilia, amateur section, year 1997), “At the source of the Vezza” (published in October 1999 by Il Tirreno), “Let’s restore the feeling of the landscape to the Torrente Mulina” (1st place in the Versilia journalistic award, single section , professionals and amateurs, year 2001), “La via nova” and many other writings on the changes that the flood of ’96 caused in the life of the villages along the banks of the waterways and in the landscape image of the streams themselves, especially that concerning the water intakes and bridges, some lost forever, others rebuilt with the level typology and no longer arched.
About a month before the flood I accompanied Gionata Paolicchi to photograph the bridges over the Fosso Picignana and the Fosso Pomezzana in Culerchio, the Filucchia Bridge and those of Zinebra and Calcaferro. Of these five crossings, four have been rebuilt except the one in Filucchia stone. The Calcaferro bridge was also made of stone, very similar to that of Zinebra, the Romanesque style bridge that hikers admire when they go up to the Mulinette archaeological mining area. The bridges over the Vezza and its tributaries before 19 June 1996 were photographed by Gionata Paolicchi. On the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the flood, the Municipalities of Stazzema and Seravezza could ask the author for the availability of the photos to publish them in a small photographic volume which could be entitled “The bridges over the Vezza, from the post-war period to the eve of the flood “.
