Le 5 terre AcT 1 / AcT 2

The disastrous flooding of 2011

The 25th of October 2011 is a date that will always be in the history of the Cinque Terre.
On this day it happened one of the worst flooding of the entire Italian history.
13 people lost their lives and the damages to properties and structures was many hundreds thousands of
euros. Many pedestrian routes have not been accessible for over a year.
The little town of Vernazza is the town who suffered the worst of the damages and has been re-built over
a period of two years.

The first floor of most of the buildings of the town have been severely damaged and required complete re- built – pretty much everything in town had to be re-built. Even the sewage system had to be completely built again .
Today there are only couple of plaques in the town to remember this tragic events, one of which is near Vernazza’s train station.

The other badly damaged villages were: Borghetto di Vara, Brugnato, Bonassola, Levanto, Monterosso al
Mare, Vernazza (Spezia) e Aulla (Massa-Carrara),La Spezia, Vernazza and Monterosso.
On Sky News, images from the Coastguard of the flooded villages, it was visible that thousands of cubic
meters of mud and debris have been moved with extraordinary force from the nearby hills. Due to there
being no trees or vegetation, the force of mother nature destroyed everything in its path.
We were not sure of what outcome we would have had from our idea, we only knew that, in a way or another, we had to do something.
We are people who love the sea and sailing, so instinctively we thought about following the first rule that
is generally thought when you start sailing: at sea no one is left behind . So we thought to apply the same rule on dry land.
We knew well how to organise events so we decided to get as many sailboat as possible out at sea on the ”Golfo dei Poeti”

and ”La Spezia” waters to fundraise in favour of a non-profit (onlus) organisation of Brugnato , town who lost everything including the school buses specifically designed to carry the disabled kids to school.
This became our objective. We created a non-profit organisation and we put clear, as first action, that not one single euros would have been used for advertising, expenses or gadgets but that instead all the money would have been spent for the project.
The result of the fundraising campaing was 28.000 euros which have been spent to purchase two school
buses designed for the used of disabled people/kids and we delivered them directly to the Major of La
Spezia and the director of the onlus organisation.

This was a fantastic experience : seeing hundreds of boat in the waters of the ”Gulf of Poets” and ”La Spezia gulf” carrying the logo of ”10.000 sails of solidarity” was simply priceless and we shortly realised that we made a little miracle out of nowhere and that if we made this time we could do it again in the future.

Amatrice AcT 3

Amatrice earthquake, 24 th August 2017

Over 300 deaths, an idyllic historic town torn to the ground, endless controversies about the fact that too many houses were destroyed too easily, controversies on the removal of the rubble and on the reconstruction of the town.

The 6.0 magnitude quake struck at 3:36 am in the town of Amatrice (and nearby villages), as registered by the sismographs of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) in the territory of the village of Accumoli (Rieti), at 8km of depth.

300 and more victims

The total number of victims of the earthquake were 299 – 239 of which were found in the area of
Amatrice only . The towns was full of people not only for the summer season, which attracted a
multitude of tourists and owner of holiday homes that are generally people born there but that had to
relocate, mostly to Rome, for work reason or family, but also because of the traditional Sagra degli
Spaghetti all’Amatriciana, one of the most famous festivals of Lazio, planned for the 27th of August, only
3 days after the tragedy.

It was decided that the full result of the fundraising campaign of the ” 10.000 Sails of Solidarity -act 3” ,
after agreement with the Municipality of Amatrice and with the heads of the school district, would have
been used for the purchase of sport clothing kits for the students of the newly built Secondary school
”Liceo Scientifico ad Indirizzo Sportivo Internazionale ” of Amatrice.
The secondary school is born thanks to the agreements between the Municipality of Amatrice and MIUR
and CONI and has the first courses planned for the academic year 2017/2018.

Even on this occasion, the sailors great heart has replied with great enthusiasm to the call for a
fundraising, getting actively involved on the waters on the 17th of May with many sailboats, from North to

South of Italy and beyond. Personally, I followed from the beginning the tremendous effort of digging the rubble – it’s a an
experience that scar deeply who lives it. Words are not enough to describe what happened and we have been only a small drops in a sea of despair that still is very much real for the survivors of this tragedy.