We propose one of our articles dedicated over the years to the victims of Giampilieri
He would never stop. They would never stop. “Do you know what it means to have a child? Do you understand the pain of that father who can no longer tighten them? I don’t go to this cursed place, and not one of my colleagues will do so, if not after having returned to that man at least the body of his children. Has a child ever tightened him to the chest? Below, there could be my son ». Tears embraced to words.
Francesco and Lorenzo. They found them after days. And until that moment they never stopped digging, even with bare hands. Everywhere. In the face of those firefighters, as children call them, the inhuman effort of those who could not fight, but only to suffer the weight of pain. Of that pain that invades your days and slams you in your face the value of the simple things that surround you. And you just have to bow the boss. Nothing since that day is more as before. For none of those who were there. Nobody will ever forget.
I will never forget. That firefighter, angry with me but with the injustice of life, never knew that he was talking to those who just on the morning of that cursed October 1 he had received the news of having an appointment with his life after 8-9 months. That long -awaited son. My son.
Lives that cross. Francesco and Lorenzo Lonia and Ilaria De Luca. From carefree puppies, tremendously beautiful schoolgirls to guardian angels. Suddenly and forever. And my Serena, from angel custodian to a child with a thousand curls and a thousand dreams on an reverse path. Today Serena is 15 years old. From ten Francesco, Lorenzo and Ilaria are no longer there. With a fate imposed by a cursed mountain and cowardly mud: not doctors, footballers, astronauts, firefighters. Everything they thought about dreaming with mom and dad. They didn’t have this tomorrow and they won’t have it. No, from that day they are guardian angels. Our guardian angels.
I will never forget the eyes of Nino Lonia. Curved ometh under the unsustainable weight of a mountain that took away his wife Maria Letizia and his two angels of two and six years, precisely Francesco and Lorenzo. He always told me that he wanted to die in their place. Life has chosen differently. He was out that evening. He was a truck driver. He was talking on the phone with Maria Letizia. In the heart the impotence of those who feel the fear of the person who loves and can do nothing because they are kilometers away. “Nino here everything collapses …” Then the line that goes away. Silence. From that day the only travel companion.
I will never forget the face of Pippo De Luca. I saw him wandering for days on the mud looking for those who would no longer be back: his wife Teresa and the 5 -year -old daughter, Ilaria. That afternoon he was with his eldest son at the Giampilieri bar. Teresa and Ilaria had come down to bring a rain jacket to the baby and were going home. The sudden roar, the landslide that comes down. Wraps and overwhelms them. Pippo sees everything from afar. Images that go back. Everyday. They will no longer go away. And the ending is always the same.
I will never forget Raffaella Maugeri’s screams. He shouted for hours for days. «You can find Leo and Cristian. Please don’t dig there, that’s not my home ». Twenty -one and twenty -three, they were at home, they had no escape.
I will never forget. The lightning of that evening. The incessant rain. The call from the newspaper to six in the morning. The interminable ascent to Giampilieri. The smell of death. I will never forget that I have walked on mud roads with the balconies of the first floor alongside. I will never forget that I have seen an endless series of coffins next to each other. Hell on the ground. The pain of a village, the blood of a people. I will never forget that message “you will become dad”, the cell phone in hand amphibians in the mud. Bagliore di vita in front of so much death.
I will never forget the words of Archbishop the plain at the funeral. «To Francesco, Lorenzo, Ilaria and all children like them in our province and from all over the world. To them I tell us to paradise ».
See you angels, today as 16 years ago. One day, far, I would like to introduce you to my Serena.