Water, lots of it, too much. As the calm returns to our mountains, it is time to collect a couple of testimonies regarding the flood that hit the Apennines in the past two days.
In Castelnovo the Civil Protection and the Green Cross, as reiterated by the mayor Emanuele Ferrari, have guaranteed the safety of the citizens, but how long will it take to fix roads and streams?
The neglect with which our rivers are left has been reported several times. We can no longer talk about a weather emergency; By now we should be prepared for extreme events of this type as they happen more and more often.
In the hamlet of Gatta, as Redacon’s images have shown, the Spirola flooded. “Compared to last year’s flood – says Luca Bianchi – the flood did not flood the entire village but the river only overflowed in the areas adjacent to the road. The prompt intervention of the inhabitants helped ensure that the alarm was lifted as soon as possible. The first bridge over the stream that connected two cultivated fields was demolished. The problem is that, since the latter was a low bridge, with the flood coming from Felina, there were many shrubs blocking the water. and they piled up. Now the water can flow without any kind of barrier… What should make us think is that this was a widely predicted precipitation, but exactly the same thing happened as last year. I don’t know what happened to do in these cases, but we should really be able to prevent certain emergency situations.”
There have been situations of discomfort along the entire State Road 63. “The water has invaded the entire road in several places – say three teachers from the Mandela Institute who are commuting for their final exams – on Tuesday morning in the Vezzano area there were numerous police officers near the Crostolo to monitor the situation. Driving in these conditions is very difficult because you can lose control of the car. We drive this road almost every week but we had never seen the river so swollen and in such a short time”.
“From memory – says 93-year-old Mrs RM – I don’t remember episodes of this type. But, you know, those were different times. The rivers were looked after. We cared about the territory; normally you didn’t find abandoned trunks or shrubs among the embankments as happens today”.
Even the youngest were scared of the water falling in such a short time. “Fortunately here there are no large torrents that can cause damage – say some students who attend the Don Bosco oratory – landslides certainly scare us. We were outside the house and in a second it started pouring. The weather forecast had said that it would have rained but not that hard…”
Andrea Casali, a videomaker well known on social media, filmed the flood from multiple views. His videos are already viral. “It seemed to me like I was living on another planet. I felt disoriented! I didn’t expect to be able to see something like that here… Personally, while I was recovering, I had a lot of adrenaline in my body: I went from the Secchia river to the sources of Poiano I stopped in Ginepreto and, around 5pm on Monday, the police closed the road right where I was. Then on my way to Rosano where I live I saw a landslide. I called the police and after a while they cleared the road There was a small flood in front of my house too! This morning I woke up to an apocalyptic scenario.
Citizens are still in disbelief: “If this is the future that awaits us – says FT, a retired trader – with climatic episodes more similar to a tropical climate than to the Mediterranean one, funds should be set aside to make our roads safe, before having to remedy the damage once it has occurred by spending double or triple”.
