Senigallia, a month of mud
The reportage by Marco Ferrazzoli from Senigallia
In Senigallia, a month after the tragedy, two Chinese people with a pressure washer continue to try to recover some objects from the immense warehouse they had found a couple of years ago. A warehouse where they had organized a mega-wholesale store: open 24/7, cheap prices. The place to watch and chat, as well as buy, as is done in places where the pace of life is more relaxed.
In the countryside, in the vegetable gardens and in the gardens of the hamlet of Cinnamon, after four weeks mostly sunny and with a temperature that allows you to tan and swim in mid-October, boots are still a must. But even so he sinks, Tito laments as he cleans his things. The brown slime layer has covered the entire vast affected area, in some cases mixing with oils and substances that give it a bluish, shiny color, acrid smell and grainy texture.
In the middle of the mud you can still find everything: even a Mivar television, which came from who knows where. Not far away, mowers and agricultural machinery from a warehouse in the area were scattered. Marco says that a washing machine has entered his office. He was selling used cars in a shed, taken over by a mechanic who had left after the flood of 2014: when the alert went off he started to take them higher, but after a while he thought it was better to get to safety . Definitely the right choice, as three victims were overwhelmed by going down to the garage. The phone calls and videos recorded and broadcast with mobile phones showing the cars dragged by the water were the first alarm that came from Cantiano, the inland town that in the late afternoon of September 15 recorded a record intensity of rain for the last 10 years, as certified by Paola Salvati of the CNR Institute of Hydrogeological Research and Protection.
From there – and then for Barbara, Pianello d'Ostra, Casino, Bettolelle, Trecastelli – everything came down, dragging things and 13 people including little Mattia, torn from his mother's embrace. Brunella Chiù is officially missing, but the rescuers half-mouth admit that by now, probably, there is not even a whole body to look for. Erina Fabi, 75, was killed while trying to close the windows of her house, a tragedy that illustrates the violence of the incident and the expression "water bomb". Experts do not like it, they say it is inappropriate, but it gives the effect of the cataclysm well: a bombardment in which, instead of the displacement of air, it is an irrepressible fury of water, earth, wood, objects, capable of gutting doors, windows, shutters. Marco says he immediately fixed the bulkheads mounted after the flood of eight years earlier at the entrances, but they worked the other way around: when everything was finished, he removed them and another 40 centimeters of mud came out from inside.
The expression "water bomb" makes it as good as that of "self-healing storm" does not seem a sufficient explanation, to those who live here. The contributing causes are then listed all, in an attempt to make sense: the abandonment of the countryside and woods, the use of chemical substances that impoverish the soil, preventing it from draining; but also the exceptional summer drought that has “cooked” the fields, so that the water slips and is no longer absorbed; and then the controversy over the expansion tanks. Undoubtedly there is a problem of land exploitation and management, which is neither today nor eight years ago. Laura remembers seeing the flood of 1976 and hearing from her father that of 1955, when the family lost the barbershop they ran next to the current Ponte degli Angeli. This time the violence was such that a couple of meters of the bridge over the Strada della Chiusa were broken and swept away, as well as the parapet above the Ponte Garibaldi, the first in the city center.
The Misa normally has a quiet course, often reduced to a trickle. It can be observed from the top of the embankments, many of which have now collapsed, exposing even more cities and countryside to the risk of other calamitous events. In its final stretch, however, it is forced into concrete, unlike the parallel and nearby Cesano which has the opportunity to flow and let off steam in a sort of gravelly swamp. Furthermore, the bridges are not humpbacked: "Also for this reason everything that went down got stuck", says Gabriele, who has his own office next to the river and that of his father, showing the shots in which you can see appliances and trunks. A "plug" that quickly caused the flooding in the city center, devastating dozens of shops still closed. The manager of a piadineria has reopened precisely for the first month and passes between the tables happy, even if repeating the damage bill. And then there is the problem of cleaning the bed: the controversies of last summer, when an islet emerged in the canal port with which the Misa arrives in the Adriatic, today resonate with much more dramatic relevance. Since the passage of the boats was diverted into the new canal, the accusation, the one that takes the river into the sea has been forgotten.
Thus, mud and debris reached the sea, creating a layer that remained on the surface up to a few tens of meters from the shore for weeks. And shooting tons of tree trunks all around, on the beach and up to the breakwater rocks. The walls of the factories held up, so the water entered all together through the gates, with such fury as to create deep pits, wide and at least two or three meters long: again, the scene is that of a bombing. Furio, one of the lifeguards, sits disconsolately looking at the nothing that remains of umbrellas and deck chairs. He replies that there are those who are worse off, that there have been the dead. But he doesn't have his usual smile.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/senigallia-un-mese-di-fango/ on Sat, 15 Oct 2022 07:57:45 +0000.