Flood disaster, but we ourselves are OK

Picture above is near the bridge just down the road.

I know that this has been on the national news in other countries, but probably not for long. In case anybody was worried, the first thing is that we are okay.

In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, let me just mention that after a very dry summer and an extraordinarily summery late September and early October, rain started in this region on Tuesday evening. The papers are saying that in some spots there was more than 20 inches of rain in eight or nine hours. To put that in context, in England the annual average total rainfall is about 33 inches.

At first I thought we had it bad with the following:

4 cm water in the office, which called for mopping up, but no serious damage was done

12 hours without tapwater

18 hours without electricity (so no gas heating either)

24 hours without telephone

30+ hours without Internet

We were also aware of road and bridge closures.

As we learn more about what had happened it became clear that we were lucky. The next village up the hill was cut off (as far as I know it still is). The town over the other hill has been completely inaccessible, helicopter drops of essential food were being made. At the last count (I haven’t looked this morning) there were at least 6 dead and 8 missing in the area, so we got away with it relatively lightly! The area has officially been declared a disaster area, with central government funds promised to help cope.

I have a few photographs of my own, and I may, given time, edit this post to make it more specific. The river that flows not far past the bottom of the garden has, for instance, significantly changed course. But in the meantime, you can get some impression from the links below.

Video on the Guardian site: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2011/oct/26/italy-flash-flooding-monterosso-liguria

From one of the local papers: http://iltirreno.gelocal.it/massa/multimedia/2011/10/26/fotogalleria/alluvione-in-toscana-e-liguria-lo-tsunami-in-30-scatti-30900680/1

These pictures are from Aulla, our second-nearest shopping town: https://www.facebook.com/media/albums/?id=407927670505#!/media/set/?set=a.10150895041120506.755201.407927670505&type=1

More local pictures: https://www.facebook.com/media/albums/?id=407927670505#!/media/set/?set=a.10150895276580506.755233.407927670505&type=1

From a national paper: http://www.corriere.it/gallery/cronache/10-2011/maltempo/1/maltempo-liguria_8a81c316-ff33-11e0-b55a-a662e85c9dff.shtml#1

Video from Pontremoli, our nearest town: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiG-q9daHAk

If you want to find more, you can search “Alluvione” (flood) along with words like Pontremoli, Aulla or Lunigiana.

And here’s a first update: 250 people were evacuated from Mulazzo, which is one “side valley” from ours, also having a river or creek that flows down to the Magra.

And here is a picture of what you find if you try to go up our valley to Castagnetoli, the village about 1 km up from us. You don’t get through – it’s one of the places to which helicopters are flying with essential supplies: