We’re used to seeing scenes from movies or hurricanes happening far from home, across the ocean. None of us could have even remotely imagined what happened on the evening of October 28th. The weather alert had been launched the day before (the lake was already flooded in Lavarone flooding the neighboring areas and rivers of mud had invaded many areas).
The rain did not give up and the wind grew stronger and more impressive, until it reached its peak from the late afternoon of the 28th : people barricaded in their homes without electricity, telephone connections and news on what was happening outside.
Fear, so much fear, the desire that everything would end quickly and that it was just a bad nightmare. Landslides and wind up to two hundred kilometers per hour that at every gust emitted a frightening sound.
Followed by a dry noise of trees that fell yielding to a force that they could not oppose to. Nature has been brought to its knees and with it the securities of those who live in the mountains.
«When nature is serious a human being can only feel powerless. Your house becomes a vessel at the mercy of the storm. It resounds and even the floors begin to vibrate», wrote Franco Del Moro, editor and musician.
And the feeling of being alone to face a catastrophic event, but we knew we were not alone: immediately the civil protection, the fire fighters, the red cross, and all the deputy organs put themselves to work - facing a hostile environment and a thousand dangers - an organizational machine that has demonstrated all its strength and its competence and that has allowed us to restore the conditions of “normality” in record time. Our most sincere thanks go to all of them, many of them volunteers and a lot of young people!
But Nature has green as its predominant color and GREEN is the color of rebirth and life itself. Green means strength and perseverance, that strength that people demonstrated in wanting to heal the wounds of its woods and putting everything in order.
When someone claims that the landscape is no longer the same as it used to be or it is no longer as beautiful: we say that for us it is even more beautiful ... because even though nature has been put on his knees it has been able to withstand a frightening fury and in spring the buds have returned to spring.
DEEP MEANINGS
100 years ago the war, that war that had left millions of young soldiers on the ground.
100 years later Vaia and now on the ground millions of trees that like a shell that surrounded us wanted to defend us from the fury of the storm, or for others the trees on the ground are the memory of those soldiers.
THE NUMBERS
- 14 million of trees has fallen or broken down by the fury of the wind in the woods of Trentino, Alto Adige, Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia
- 4 million cubic meters of forests demolished in Trentino
- 23 million of euros spent by private individuals for the damage caused and
- 25 million for woods only
- 360 million of euros spent only in Trentino
- Over 50% of the abated timber has already been sold
DID YOU KNOW IT?
Vaia, the origin of the name is a gift paid a little bit more than 200 euros. The Weather Institute of the Free University of Berlin has the task of naming the areas of low or high pressure that follow one another in Europe and this name can be purchased and personalized. A German citizen thought of making a birthday present to his sister named Vaia, naming the low pressure area that was established at our latitudes at the end of October 2018, without knowing the damage that it would have caused. It all costed 199 euros plus Vat.
