Tensions are sky-high in Casamicciola Terme where in recent days, as part of the redevelopment of the area, they were proceeding with the demolition of the shack built in Piazza Maio by earthquake victims the day after the earthquake of August 21, 2017.
A shack that in addition to serving in recent years the citizens of the area to meet, distract themselves and give each other courage, also for the recent flood has represented an important and indispensable civil protection garrison where the displaced covered in mud were reassured and refreshed with food, hot tea, various drinks and a word of comfort.
A shack where old and young people in the most tragic moments with tears in their eyes, when in the area they were digging to look for the missing and in Piazza Maio there were hundreds of people present including rescuers, police forces, politicians and journalists, in addition to giving a hand for the distribution of meals provided by Caritas and other volunteer associations, they themselves took care of cooking everything and offering coffee to those who wanted it.
“In the days following the earthquake and the flood,” the frequenters of the shack declared in chorus, “we helped the volunteers with everything, even distributing meals, and the women of Maio cleaned the bathrooms used daily by hundreds of people four times a day without the municipality even providing us with gloves.”
Elderly and less elderly people, meeting even just to share something to eat or simply to watch television, for seven years right in this humble shack and thanks to this meeting point, have found the strength to go on despite having lost family, friends and acquaintances beyond the house where they were born and where they lived for over half a century.
And for them to know that without having an alternative “refuge” in exchange, this meeting place so humanly comfortable and also of psychological help for them will be “stolen” from them with the demolition from those institutions that should thank them for the extraordinary voluntary work they provided during the earthquake and the flood, represents an existential drama that adds to the tragedies they have already experienced.
“If they take away this meeting point from us,” they stressed, “we will go to the cemetery because this is our meeting point and support.”
And as Ida Trofa, spokesperson for these humble and honest workers, claims, "if the shack must be torn down, then let it be torn down, but at the same time the State must immediately create an alternative indoor space in Piazza Maio where earthquake and flood victims can continue to spend a few hours together every day, to distract themselves, to feel like a community again, and less alone and isolated. And for this reason a petition has also been signed to be sent to the President of the Republic and to the President of the Council".
What else to add? It seems that the institutions still do not know who seven years ago erected the shack when even the stones know very well that it was the people of Maio who built it.
In a normal country, these elderly people would first be rewarded by the State for the extraordinary voluntary work they have done, and before being evicted from their shack, symbol of a community that despite everything resists to remain alive and cohesive, they should have been summoned to announce the immediate creation of a new and more comfortable meeting point in the same place.
And again. Given how much money has already been spent on securing, through shoring up, the homes damaged by the earthquake, before spending a single euro to demolish them, all available economic resources should be used to give all the displaced people a home again.
This should be the priority for a State of Law. And instead, even in this case, for now, the only ones to gain will be technicians, companies and landfills for the disposal of rubble, while the ones to lose, as always, will once again be the poor people who know nothing if one day they will be recognized that right to housing that the State had not guaranteed them, as it should have been in a country worthy of being called civilized, but that they had guaranteed with the sweat of their brow and the blood of hard work.
Gennaro Savio
Article published on 26 September 2024 - 09:52
