The flood that hit Marche and Emilia-Romagna (Italy) about a month and a half ago caused the loss of 15 human lives, thousands of displaced people and the overflowing of 23 rivers. To date, the flooding of about 100 municipalities has been recorded. Numerous landslides have affected small producers, dozens of square kilometers of agricultural land and livestock have been destroyed by the power of the water, along with bridges and roads. The contributions collected by the Emergency Coordination of the Focolare Movement, AMU and AFN are currently 182,000 euros. In collaboration with APS Emilia-Romagna, a local emergency committee was formed that identified some areas of intervention: Cesena, Sarsina, Faenza, Castel Bolognese and Ravenna. The needs of the affected population are being collected, especially through personal relationships and by filling out forms in which each person declares the damage suffered and the request. Among the many people affected, Maria Chiara Campodoni , a married focolarina, teacher and Sports Councilor from 2010-2015 and President of the Faenza City Council 2015-2020, who tells us about the drama of this experience but also the hope needed to move forward. Maria Chiara, how did you experience this moment?
In Faenza there were two floods. The water entered our house for the first time on May 2nd for 30 centimeters. It was in the afternoon, with light and in the house there were me and a son. At first we took it almost as an adventure, but that same night I preferred that my husband, who in the meantime was out picking up the other two children from sports activities, not come back, because outside there was much more water than inside and we only have French windows on the ground floor. Letting them back into the house would have meant letting in a lot more water too. So they went to sleep at their grandparents’ house and we tried to take some things upstairs, we had dinner in the rooms and went to bed. Even the firefighters who had passed by had reassured us, telling us that the situation would not get worse. The next day the water level inside and outside was the same and then, in agreement with my husband, we decided to leave the house. When 15 days later they started advising to evacuate the ground floors because it was about to happen again, the whole city went on alert and understood that it had to mobilize because it would be something of a greater magnitude. And what happened the second time? The second flood, the one we escaped, came in the evening. Around 8:30 pm the river bank broke right above our house and up until that moment , since we were equipped with a pump inside the house, we hadn’t gone out convinced that we could control the flow of the pumps, keep the water low even with the help of sandbags. Instead , within 20 minutes the water reached the first floor , it reached 3 meters in a very short time and we found ourselves trapped there. We called for help and they immediately responded saying they would arrive, but in the meantime that afternoon the Savio river in Cesena had already flooded, so the civil protection, the firefighters, who until the day before were all in Faenza, were already a bit more spread out in the various areas. Furthermore, in my street the current was so strong that motor vehicles only managed to enter at four in the morning and we wouldn’t have been able to resist until that time. The police told us to go on the roofs, but we don’t have a skylight, so it meant going there from outside, floating. The situation was really dangerous. At a certain point, a cousin of my husband, knowing from social media that the river had broken its banks right at our house, called him and asked if we were already out. From the voice he perceived that we were in danger and since he is an athlete, he surfed as a boy, he put on his wetsuit, took his board and threw himself into the current. He swam to our house and, pushing the surfboard, one at a time, picked us up, carrying us safely to the city walls, 500 meters from our house.
What did you see once you got outside? Immersed in the current, the whole perspective had changed. The water was already above the street signs, so you no longer knew if you were on the road or in the garden of a house. We passed over gates, over garages and we were so high that at a certain point he asked me to hold on to what looked like a bush, but in reality, now that I see it, it was a tree. I was the last one to survive. Wet and wet, we were welcomed into the house by a lady who knows us. She made us undress in her bathroom, gave us clean clothes because it was also freezing cold that night and it was raining. We warmed up and then ran away 6 kilometers from the city where my mother-in-law lives. We were really lucky because we were among the first to come out. Above all, we did not experience what many later told us about, a real night of terror in the city. Did the children notice the danger? Yes. I have three children aged 10, 8 and 6. At one point the youngest kept running down the stairs because we saw the water rising step by step and he said to me: “ 5 steps left, 4 four steps. Let’s go to the terrace, we have to escape” and we said “we are here at the window, because it’s raining outside. Now the police are coming ”. In short, they realized and slowly had to metabolize, especially the big one. For an hour we feared we wouldn’t make it. Once at grandma’s they were more relaxed even if when they got there they started to understand that we had lost everything. They told me, ” Mom, we don’t have our school bags, our books anymore, and now what? “. I explained to them that many would help us. And so it was.
How were the first few days? Where did you find shelter?
We stayed at my mother-in-law’s house for a couple of days because we couldn’t move around the city. Then, later, we were welcomed by an aunt of a friend of my son who lives abroad and who lent us her little house in the center for a month, 10 minutes walk from where we lived, so we could go and start shoveling. We were cramped, but it was truly a great gift and perhaps I realized it later, when I started hearing the stories of others. flood emilia-romagnaAfterwards, volunteers also started arriving from all over the city. I must say that at our house, partly because of the Focolare Movement and partly because my husband has various contacts, friends have always come. They came from Parma, Piacenza, Veneto and even those who suffered the earthquake in Emilia years ago, felt a real call to come and lend a hand. There was a wonderful climate, of real help, and it is in this climate that, little by little, I began to throw everything away but I was really calm. Shoveling mud is an all-consuming thing at the beginning, you try to do your best, in the effort and then you realize that it is not the things, the objects that make your life, but everything else. Your husband also has a restaurant… Yes. He had seen from the cameras that fortunately there was no water there but he needed to go and see for himself. One day he left at six in the morning thinking of taking the highway but that was closed too. We had an idea: ” Let’s call the deputy mayor, and tell him that if they take you with the civil protection to the restaurant, you will start cooking for everyone in need “. And I must say that he gladly accepted our putting ourselves at the service, because there were already many displaced people there. Luckily, they had taken all the disabled and elderly people away before and sent them to this hotel which is very close to my husband’s restaurant, but which doesn’t have active kitchens. So my husband and two employees were at the restaurant for a whole day, they served 700 people between lunch and dinner. Of these evacuees there were 100 people, the firefighters, the civil protection and since the restaurant is located right on the Via Emilia, a crossing point, many of the people who were stuck on the street, who had slept in their cars without eating, came to the restaurant asking for help. The entire area of Cesena and Forlì was paralyzed. How will you organize yourselves now? We have now left the little house that hosted us. We will move to a house that we have at the seaside for a while and then we have rented an apartment for 18 months while we wait to fix up our house. The aim is to return in September 2024. Then there are many question marks, first of all understanding if there will be companies that can renovate all these houses, because there are so many of us. We are talking about 12,000 people out of their homes. 6,000 families in our city alone and some houses, the oldest, have been declared uninhabitable. Now the houses have to dry out. We have already destroyed everything. We had parquet and we removed it, the false ceilings on the ground floor came down by themselves when the water came down and with the help of many we managed to at least disconnect the sanitary fixtures. Now every morning we go to open the windows and in the evening we go to close them to turn on the dehumidifier. Luckily it is summer. If it had happened in autumn, it would have been a greater inconvenience. Does solidarity continue? Absolutely, and in various forms. For example, at the beginning we thought of looking for a house already furnished so as not to have to move twice, but we realized that people started giving away everything: wardrobes, mattresses, bedrooms, sofas. We chose to take an empty house so we could start refurnishing with this providence and then, in 18 months, bring everything back to our house, also because then there will certainly be other priorities. People are really happy to help and I must say that for me it was a lesson. I remember that one day, after the first flood, my house was upside down and the washing machine was broken. I said to myself ” I make three bags, one of white clothes to wash, one with the colored ones, one with the black ones and then I go to work. The first colleague who asks me ‘how can I help you?’, I tell her ‘if you are ready for anything these are the clothes to wash ‘”. I didn’t even have time to take a step to school before I had already handed them out. In these cases, a stronger bond is created with people and above all, I was not ashamed to ask for help. We accepted what was given to us and I feel that it is also a way to lay myself bare in front of my needs and say, okay, we love each other like this, for what we are. Even with the neighbors a good bond has been created. We have lived there for four and a half years but I had never entered so many neighbors’ gardens, because life is frenetic anyway, you rush. Instead now you come in, you greet each other, you help each other. What phase opens now? The second phase has begun, that of creating citizens’ committees to start communicating with the municipal administration. I would have pulled out immediately for various reasons, especially for having held certain roles in the past, but then I understood that without exposing myself too much, listening, staying in the chats, helping those in charge of these committees, I can do my part. I owe it to my children who still ask me ” but do we have to go back to living there? Do we build an outside staircase that takes us to the roof next time? ”. There is a need for active citizenship to monitor situations. I felt that I also had to make my experience available, in the right ways, creating as many connections as possible, because now, as always happens when there is something to rebuild, the greatest fear is that of being alone. Are you hopeful? Yes, really. The other day we had to give a little present to this lady who hosted us in her house for the first month and, since Faenza is the city of ceramics, I bought her a tile to hang on the wall with the phrase “ The beautiful things in life make your hair messy ”. I told myself that this was a huge mess, a huge mess. It will take us some time to get back on our feet and we will make it, but I feel that I would not have been able to have certain experiences without having lived through this very hard moment. I really feel like I’ve reached that point where you look at the essential, at what matters. It was terrible, but I can’t just think about the disaster, that the water took everything away and that was it. There is much, much more. Maria Grazia Berretta
(Interview by Carlos Mana – Photo: courtesy of Maria Chiara Campodoni)
