The citizens of Emilia Romagna remember the night between May 3rd and 4th as if it were yesterday. The fear, the anguish of seeing their homes and cities destroyed. A tragedy that caused 23 rivers to overflow, affecting about 100 municipalities, causing thousands of displaced people and 15 victims. The Emergency Coordination of the Focolare Movement immediately took action to support the population already hit hard by this terrible event, and started a fundraiser through AFN and AMU , in collaboration with the APS Focolari Romagna, which collected and managed the requests from local communities. “The damage caused by the flood was there for the whole world to see and help arrived from all over the world. Then the spotlights went out, but the disaster caused by the water remained” shares with us, six months after the floods, Antonio Pacchierini , contact person for APS Focolari Romagna, who worked together with the association’s board of directors and the local community representatives to record all the different needs. It is thanks to the work in collaboration with APS Emilia Romagna that the aid received from the fundraiser is being managed to date. Thanks to those who, among the vast network of local contacts and volunteers, collected the testimonies and needs of the affected families, trying to convey everyone’s solidarity. In a precious team effort that has allowed us to reach even the rural areas of the territory. “Those who had their homes invaded by water now have to redo plaster, floors, fixtures. They have to furnish the entire house. Those who had their farm affected by landslides still have to worry about how to go on, with crops that have not been there and hills that need to be monitored to avoid further land collapses.”
To date, there are about ten families supported by the aid that has arrived, who have been able to receive a small contribution to return to normal life. Among these, the experience of the Educational Farm “Il Pagliaio” in Sarsina, a municipality in the province of Forlì-Cesena, is interesting. “It is a family, three people, who for about twenty years have dedicated themselves to the construction of an Educational Farm on the hills. They have become passionate about the nature of the place. They have built with their own hands a rustic house, fences and stables for various animals. They have planted and started to cultivate a field of cherry trees, they have put arable fields back into use, they have learned to cut and trade the wood of the many forests of their new property. Little by little they have also built an entire agritourism” Antonio explains to us. “The educational farm works like this: school classes go there and they do sensory education, they meet their animals, ‘almost’ trained (roosters, pigs, geese) and they take them for a ride with their star: the donkeys. They are very cuddled and called by name”. As has happened to many other local businesses, a financial crisis exacerbated by the years of the pandemic was compounded by the tragedy of the flood, which devastated their land. “They were asking for help to build a concrete embankment to secure a large landslide tens of meters long. They needed concrete and welded mesh; they didn’t have enough money to do it. Teaching was suspended because the main road was closed to traffic. The situation was serious. One of us went to check. I found (no point in pretending) a beautiful place, in love with nature and their activity, even if a little tired and discouraged”. Through the solidarity of those who donated for this emergency, we managed to rebuild the embankment and, thanks to the involvement of young volunteers from the area, a Work Camp was set up that did the rest. There was so much closeness and desire to start again that everyone expressed according to their own possibilities and availability : “For them it was a very powerful light.” As with the Educational Farm, other families have also been supported in this crisis phase, and the work is still in progress, Antonio and his Association are already collecting other requests for help coming from the territories of Cesena; Sarsina; Faenza; Castel Bolognese; Ravenna. Antonio continues by telling us about the current situation in the Romagna region: “The brown water and mud on the streets of the flooded areas has been gone for several months now.
The catastrophe represented by piles of various materials stacked on the roadside, made of furniture and objects taken out of cellars, garages or flooded apartments, is now a memory. Many people who were displaced have returned to their homes and have fixed them, life has started flowing again leaving behind a bad memory. For others, however, the devastation is still a cause of discomfort. Many people have found temporary accommodation in the homes of relatives or friends, others have gone to live in rented apartments. To date there are still about eighty families living in structures (hotels) made available by the Municipalities. The flood is a memory, the damage it caused is not yet”.
