It was a few minutes past 1:30 PM today, Monday 1st July, when “Fiamma 03” – the Carabinieri helicopter that, together with those of the Fire Brigade and Civil Protection, is shuttling between Cogne and Aymavilles for the evacuation of tourists stranded at the foot of Gran Paradiso – landed on the Sant’Orso meadow. With the interruption of the regional road 47, Chanoux square is the nerve center for those who have to return homeafter a holiday canceled by the flood that hit the valley on the evening of last Saturday, June 29th.
Yesterday, Sunday 30, the continuous flights brought back to the valley about 500 people. Today, the early morning forecast was to move the same number during the day. Numbers for which the civil protection machine worked at full speed. On the side of the town hall, sheltered under gazebos, people who will board the next flights are waiting. On the opposite side of Place Chanoux, in line at the tourist information office, there are those who are registering to leave and will do so, presumably, tomorrow.
Among the former, there is no excitement. There are children, elderly people, several dogs. Everything that is part of a family’s daily life. “Fear? The other evening yes,” he says Silvano, from the province of Milan, waiting to leave the place – the river was full. Luckily the hotel was raised.” After a look at his boxer she adds: “It might be a problem to get on the helicopter with the dog, I don’t know what reaction he might have, but we’ll try. On the other hand, we have to go back, we can’t do it by car.”.
Not far away, a helicopter rescuer gives the people in line the final instructions for boarding. A tourist asks him: “should we turn off the phone once on board?”. “There’s no need, ma’am, we’re not a scheduled company. – She replies, bringing the smiles of those who have a great desire for lightness after an unexpected event and fear – We’ll give you a smarter check-in and you can even bring heavier luggage”. Words that make the smiles from moments before turn into applause of encouragement, for those who have been working for hours.
On the first floor of the Town Hall, in permanent session of the Municipal Operations Centre, the mayor Franco Allera find a moment for the journalists who have arrived in town. “These are complicated days – she explains – I think in the last forty-eight hours I slept 6-7 hours”. With the mind, the mayor says he is back to the time of the 2000 flood: “I wasn’t in administration then, but I was a freelancer and we were involved more or less as we are doing now, creating various working subgroups.”
Since then many things have changed and “the Civil Protection certainly gave us a big hand, even if It’s now a fact that we are telephone addicts”. In Cogne, after the first hours of blackout of the mobile networks, almost all the companies were reactivated, except one. The flood “has however taken away our fiber optics, so the entire backbone of supply of information and data does not work, the ATMs do not work. Now they are intervening, I hope that today they will be able to do something”.
Not far from the town hall (you will still meet some people along the streets, it is not a ghost town), the Hotel Bellevue was ready to experience the season’s take-off right now, like all the facilities in the town. 95 employees and a two/three week closure are on the horizon. The period will also be linked to the answers that will have to come from the institutions on the redundancy fund and other aspects, but the desire to send a clear and strong message to the rest of the world is great. “The country is working, we are all finedice Pietro Imbimbo Roulletowner and Adava delegate for the area, then asking – to those who want to help Cogne – “not to cancel reservations”.
The critical issues are three kilometers from the capital. In that Valnontey where everyone assures “the situation is more serious than in 2000”. The valley was hit by the flooding of the stream to which it owes its name which, having left its course, entered a campsite and spilled out near the bridge that crosses the hamlet. In the middle, it grazed some houses, filling the squares with mud and leaving behind the fall of several landslides. The snap of the waters tore up not only the road, but also the aqueduct, which from there also serves the capital and Epinel.
The country is therefore without water (electricity, however, has been restored after an initial period of absence). Since early this morning, twenty-two people are at work, with the possibility of a reconnection in the evening. Meanwhile, still in Piazza Chanoux, a tank is available for supplies. Not far away, there is also a medical station, with a doctor. The feeling, however utopian, is that the uniforms of different colors have managed to become one here towards people in difficulty.
The feeling is corroborated by the words of a group of campers, who we meet near the car park parallel to the Sant’Orso meadow. They arrive from Sardinia and refused evacuation by helicopter: “we can’t leave the camper here, also because it’s full of stuff. We await directions. However, they provided us with water and assistance.” They were in the area near the river, which they abandoned after consulting with each other when the water rose on Saturday.
Fear? “If we had delayed leaving for 10-15 minutes, he would have taken the camper too” they reply. However, “they escorted us and assisted us, we must tell the truth”. Behind them, not far away, a firefighter frees a load that has just been unloaded on the ground from a helicopter. It is a bundle of pegs that two boys are taking back to widen the fence of a herd. “A friend got stuck and the animals have run out of grass in that area”, they explain, “we need to feed them”.
They are the last people met before returning to the Valley, once again on board an Air Force aircraft. However, what remains in the reporter’s notebook, at the end of the couple of hours in town, is that from this collective reaction capacity, each for his part, a fact emerges. Cogne is hurt, at times even deeply, but far from knocked out. Ready to get back up, a result that the institutions (the Region first and foremost) can – and must – collaborate on, but that the cogneins know well must be conquered first and foremost on the territory. By them. And they started chasing it even before the rain stopped.
