Polis - The city of the Scouts

After the release of the steps with a thousand emotions in my head ... I arrive home, but this time I do not have to undo once the pack ... shower, dinner third cake! Tomorrow we start again, I have to hurry but I'll take it slowly, and so I find myself sleepy to put new equipment in a backpack ...

In the morning the team with which I will share the next three days ... we are ready in nine: Mario and Luciano dell'acireale 5 and marcello, unless, danilo, blacks wibble, wibble dema, Matt and I dell'acireale 4. After buying the boots, which will prove crucial, let's start! Three days of service we expect, our goal is Zanclea ladder! The cars full of faithful tools: shovels, picks and even a wheelbarrow. We form a train car crash!

Once in Roccalumera highway gives way to the ionic state, which gradually begins to show signs of the flood of October 1: dust in the streets, and trucks full of soil. And 'we see that, for now. After some 'curves, we arrive at City Hall Zanclea ladder. According to the volunteer tell us that by October 10th (two days before) the registration of volunteers must be made ​​in Roccalumera (!). Full of good will retrace in reverse the 11 km of road that separate ladder Roccalumera and we arrived at the COC record! Ladder we head back to the place we're going to serve leathers.

Meanwhile, we begin to observe: the trucks are full of material back and forth and gradually we realize the gravity of the situation. Mechanical work on all kinds of mud some bulldozers move it, while others collect filling up the trucks, large caterpillar touch the ground with a delicacy that you would not expect, where it is needed. The first impression is what we feared: the images and we received the news that they can not properly describe the situation we face. Mud, mud and mud. The streets show signs of the oil spill that has submerged until a few days before. The mud stopped just below the balconies of the first floors of homes and so overwhelmingly filled all the ground floors, with no distinction between residential and commercial businesses. A hardware store is full of paint cans put dirty fleece, rolls of sandpaper are transferred elsewhere ... debris and rubble everywhere along the road, all kinds of clusters are present in front of houses, furniture destroyed, mud, stones and anything else.

Everything around us speaks of over 5 meters wave that swept everything. The bulldozers have removed the 4 feet of mud that covered the main road, but in many homes, the ground floor, is still high mud no less than 1.70 meters, over the whole area of ​​the apartment. Some buildings that were in the direction of the mouth of the river (which has expanded greatly) is very little, have them cut down, or at least have secured what little remains of it. The first question that arises is: what is the cause of all this? And then again: how is it that the buildings are constructed in this way, with all the necessary permissions?!

In the days that followed the disaster hydrogeological Messina many have blamed to illegal, so the affected areas have been penalized civil opinion, and misinformation reigned supreme. Certainly the illegal has its faults, for example because we can still see houses (no damage, however) resting on the piers of the motorway ... but the question that comes to us is this: perhaps the problem lies in the mentality of patronage and permits too easy? Maybe you soon forget that there a lot of water once flowed on the surface and you fall into the trap, seeing that the bed of the stream is a stream of time?

In other words: respect for the land and its safety measures (preventive) give way to the culture of "never did anything" .... But they are just personal opinions that are easy to outsource after the fact. Now the buildings are sequestered and large reinforced concrete beams were cut and classified (over 70 pieces) and there is no doubt that the investigation will tell us the causes and responsibilities. Soon we realize that ladder grows in length at the sides of the main road (the ionic state) and is limited to the east by the railway line (beyond which is the beach) and west of the highway. All in two valleys crossed by two streams. A stretch of railway, which had been submerged by the mud, it was promptly rebuilt, in the only existing track (!).

The mud that covered everything but does not come from the surrounding hills that seem right to have 230 mm of rain that poured all at once (4 to 5 hours seems) of this area. The mud comes from higher up the hills: 3-4 km further on, tell us, perhaps. Mud is a pile of earth, water, and more ... where "other" means everything from small stones, large stones and roots, trees and windows, dozens of tons of boulders (huge, destroyed by giant mechanical) that have also supported the piers of the motorway ... The cars, dozens and dozens, are reduced to unrecognizable piles gray ... cut and folded sheet metal as aluminum foil ... that have crashed into buildings, destroying some.

In this scenario, very similar to that of a war, like we all have sadly seen on television, you insert the mechanical working tirelessly. In turn we also notice a lot of uniforms, some perhaps too clean ... but for us it's time to put the work of getting polluted. We work alongside the army boys and girls in the house of Mr. Mimmo and his mother's house next door. Even a grandson of Mimmo, Francis, helps us to remove the mud with a pickaxe. In this house lived the mother of Mimmo that day had gone by relatives: fortuitous choice as it happens a few times a year. To enter into this apartment we pass by several flats already free from the mud, so that early struggle to navigate the different houses.

We split into groups of three minimum (pick and shovel wheelbarrow ...) and begin to empty the house of the mud. It starts with the picks, gathers with the shovel and pull-water (rake without teeth) gives us a hand! The barrows are filled quickly, not without difficulty, and little by little you see some results. But when a small mechanical device comes in handy as we are all happy! Ulysses is the name of the driver of this strange medium that has a work surely different from that for which it was designed! We work with pick and shovel to clear the mud from the objects found inside the house ... and then try to collect the mud Ulysses. Get out the strangest things, from bulky mattresses and we block the way for small ornaments, like a shell. We find the books of a high school girl (who is now the terror of mud). We find a TV full of heavy mud and more books ... a radio, bedside lamps ... and still rocks and roots ... there's everything. The front door of the apartment in the middle corridor is locked, we can remove the second day is half submerged. Water meters (from which comes the mud is mixed with water) are submerged in the mud, the clothes in the closets are dirty and smelly ... everything is full of the smell that we have learned about: the smell of mud. Sometimes it happens that, by opening a piece of furniture, as well as objects come out muddy water also comes out from the smell unbearable.

When we get to the bottom we see that the floors of the house we are tilted under the weight of the mud here and there ... some items recovered: a chair out intact, the book twilight dirt ... a box full of beer bottles, filled with sauce made home, exits a room ... Everything for the home owner has a value that we can not understand. After all we are strangers in the house of others, we open the road in a narrow corridor or in a bedroom or kitchen or bathroom, helping with a pickaxe, trying to free up those walls. In two cases we have to throw down a good chunk of the wall, because it is impossible for us to break through the door of the room ... Little by little, the results are obvious and we are two days in this way. In some places only pick, shovel and wheelbarrow, in others with the help of Ulysses, a follower of Jean Jacques Rousseau, of which he also read a good book. Emerge from the mud of the strangest objects: an old tin box hidden inside a collection of fishing hooks.

In the evening we go to sleep in elementary school near the town hall, four cots for nine people and a lot of mothballs. Fatigue is a lot of clean up but that's what we need, before going to dinner in the cafeteria equipped gym nearby middle school. Instead eat lunch on site, with the bags that we deliver the mayor's wife, the mayor on the first day we met in the square. The third day (yesterday 14 October) the weather threatened rain, but we go to the home of Mr. Mimmo (French teacher). When we get in place the Civil Protection informs us that there is an alert weather and therefore we must go on. After a moment of uncertainty once we return to school and find work, however, because there are some essential items to be placed and divide.

Let's table, we celebrate the birthday of one of us with a cake in the afternoon and we decide to move from Giampilieri to realize the situation, before returning to Acireale. Once in that Giampilieri us is a different scenario, which has caused damage more or less similar but more severe. Giampilieri, which is a fraction of Messina, lies in a valley much narrower than that of the ladder. The creek bed has a much larger, but, and here is the big difference, the mud that covered the streets and entered the homes comes from the surrounding hills that have withstood the rain and were crumbling in on themselves. The deployment of the fire is significant: both men of means. On each side a piece of the hill fell down covering the streets, that despite the large use of resources are still partly filled with mud. Above the narrow vaneddi typical of this fraction, where the fire bobcat remove red mud all the time.

The army is present and receives orders from firefighters who give permission to enter a building or another. We realize how different the two hydrological disasters and how the safety of Giampilieri work seems really long. The hills are still there, ready to crumble, and bare with no vegetation except a few spots here and there. The population is completely displaced, and we learn that some old man is in the morning at 5 and a half to go to his house, threatening. We are told that in two other villages on what are called Giampilieri Atol Molino and the situation is the same plus some insist on sleeping in their homes. There is also the fear that so many people not registered, or other caregivers who are unknown to other victims of this disastrous flood.

Another question makes us think: what have influenced the fires that hit the area in recent summers Giampilieri and ladder? What is the real burden on criminals who should lead that we persist in calling only cowardly arsonists? After talking with a nice Army sergeant (in the past scouts, I think) back there to take care of the paperwork for the reimbursement of fuel ... and then we get home ...

Some considerations seem to me due to:

Suit, equipment and means of transport, should be provided in some way by the department of civil protection or industry EPC Agesci Sicily ( emergency civil protection). We made use of the reimbursement of fuel and meals at the table, but used personal equipment. In addition, the regional coordination AGESCI is poor. We have been triggered by the regional manager as a team but we have got to get in touch with EPC patrol the area of ​​Messina (Strait area) only because I phoned a member of the patrol that I have known EPCs to my CMF, and there are so could see ladder, taking stock of the situation at the end of our second day of service.

Our thoughts and support go out to all those who lost loved ones and those who find themselves in precarious situations, hoping soon to find a way and the strength to recover and start again. That little thing we did, and we plan to be back on the places in the next few days, hoping that no one leave these people alone ...

Service carried out the days 12-13-14 October 2009 in Scaletta Zanclea

In this photo from the top and from left to right: Unless Mario, Ulysses, Danilo, Mimmo, Mr. Digger, Marcello, Ettore Francesco Ciccio Demas, Blacks Ciccio, Matthew

Text of Hector Musmeci
Photo of Ciccio Dema