It can’t be true. It’s not really happening. “Disasters like this happen once every 100, 200, 500 years,” experts and meteorologists said in May 2023 when talking about the flood in Emilia-Romagna. After all, they were based on scientific data: “The return periods of the single event of May 16, 2023 are greater than about 60 years, for the basins where the event was less severe, and greater than 500 years where the floods were more significant. The inclusion of the data observed in 2023 reduces the estimated return period values, which however often remain greater than 100 years,” were the conclusions of a study conducted last year by the Technical-Scientific Commission established by the Emilia-Romagna Region.

After 16 months the same nightmare

And yet… Whether the years are 100, 200 or 500, this time time has passed damn faster. This time it took just 16 months to make Romagna relive that nightmare, even before giving it the chance to process it properly. Even before it finished licking its wounds, then stitching them up and raising its head again. Yes, because among the thousands of people from Romagna who today find themselves having to deal (again) with destruction, many had not yet finished fixing the damage from the flood of May 2023. Or, even worse, many had just managed to do so. To buy some furniture, a car or, more simply, to finally return home, after having spent months and months in precarious housing or with some relative.

“It can’t happen to us again”

When it started raining again on Wednesday in Romagna, more and more insistently by the hour, the feeling was one of disbelief. “It can’t always happen to us”, we said to ourselves trying to convince ourselves. After all, we knew it would rain a lot, but “nothing comparable to what happened in May 2023”, the experts reassured based on forecasts that, however reliable, were swept away in a few minutes by the overwhelming flood of the rivers, which with its power in an instant reopened those wounds that were not yet completely healed, weakening again the same territory that just 16 months ago had fought tooth and nail not to break completely, putting all its resilience into play (an often overused word, but in these circumstances I think more than appropriate).

Preventing the next floods

It almost seems that nature, with its strength, wants to challenge that of the people of Romagna, always so much praised at every opportunity but which, like all things, has a limit. A strength that, above all, must not and cannot be used – in 2023 as today – as an opportunity to wash one’s hands of it and hide responsibilities. The ‘tin bòta’ are beautiful, the ‘Romagna in bloom’ is beautiful even in the middle of the mud, the volunteers who shovel while singing ‘Romagna Mia’ together are beautiful. But by now we have understood that, however strong, the people of Romagna can never be stronger than nature and the cry of a planet that demands more respect, more care, less concreting and more prevention. Because persevering would be diabolical, indeed, irresponsible.

We know that we live in a beautiful but vulnerable territory, increasingly vulnerable and increasingly subject to a climate that has now changed irreversibly. If it took just 16 months and not 200 years, after all, we will need to update the accounts. Romagna will continue to find the courage, to fight, to get up, to put new stitches on the reopened scars. But, as cyclical as history is, our land cannot be condemned to having to start all over again every time. To helplessly watch the water destroy what has just been laboriously rebuilt. Let’s listen to the warning of our planet that is trying, however dramatically, to teach us something. This time let’s really do it. Because in the long run, in the tug of war between the strength of the Earth and that of Romagna, the result – unfortunately – is already written.