The first big heat and the earth that starts shaking again: it's a bad film and unfortunately we have already seen what is on stage today. Just 13 months later it seems to relive a quiet weekend of fear.
It's Friday, a beautiful day that is finally a little cooler in the province of Bologna, after the heat of recent days, a perfect "village Saturday" of contemporary society which sanctifies the weekend. It's 12,30 and I'm already at the table with friends, when my chair starts moving back and forth. I don't even reflect for a minute, the word comes like a flash to my mouth and the thought follows slow as thunder: "The earthquake!" I say and get up to go out. But some look at me in disbelief, they are still standing and have not realized anything. Maybe it's less serious than I fear. Then I look at the chandeliers that go back and forth and the feeling of vertigo experienced a year ago resurfaces in the skin more than in the consciousness. It was 20 and 29 May 2012 when the earthquake, with two shocks of magnitude 5,8 and 5,9, claimed 26 victims in Emilia.
Won't we start over? While the houses are still dilapidated and the companies grappling with the reconstruction parameters? Will we not see the tents, the uninhabitable houses and above all the people who remain under the rubble? Some historic centers are still cordoned off, won't everything come down? It's only a few minutes, but how many things can be imagined in such a short time!
The shaking stops. An important earthquake, but perhaps not very close. In a few minutes, mobile phones tell us everything: “the epicenter was located between the municipalities of Fivizzano and Casola in Lunigiana, in the province of Massa, Minucciano, in the province of Lucca. Based on the findings of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (Ingv), the shock was recorded at 12:33 with a magnitude of 5.2, at a depth of about 5 kilometers". After a couple of hours another tremor east of the epicenter and then another twenty, the so-called seismic swarm.
Our Tuscan cousins are going through what we went through last year. The thought goes to my uncles who really live in those parts: "A very strong earthquake - they tell me on the phone, a fear like we've never had, but no one was hurt". I think of Garfagnana, of its poignant beauty, of those houses so poor and aristocratic at the same time, of that enveloping greenery, of the many foreign tourists and the few Italians. Will it still be the fault of this Apennines, which does not want to stay in the mountains and approaches the sea? And to our plain, in the middle, which until last year didn't know it was so fragile? What awaits us now?
Fortunately, the news arriving at breakneck speed on the internet is reassuring: the event is always frightening, but at least not fatal. On the other hand, the tragedy that struck Emilia was also exacerbated by the fact that the area was full of industrial settlements, strong-looking and diligent warehouses, sure to proliferate in a quiet area. However, the sunburn still hurts a lot and people have learned not to completely trust their beloved land: "The shock was distinctly felt in various cities, including Milan and Parma - reads Reuters - where schools were evacuated as like the Barilla offices. "We felt a strong shock that lasted about 10 seconds," explains Luca Di Leo, Barilla spokesman, adding that the approximately XNUMX office and plant employees were evacuated.
The antennae are straight again, as is inevitable. All that remains is to hope that they no longer sway.
