I don’t want this to become the ‘Italian Flood Blog’, but the disastrous events which are taking place here at the moment are just too big to ignore. This time it’s the city of Genova on the Ligurian coast that has been very badly hit by torrential rain and floods. In the following video recorded on Friday, 4th of November, at around 1:00 pm  you can here someone saying “Madonna, è imprigionato nella macchina quello lì, cazzo!”

My friend Adriana lives in Genova, and as I was really worried about her I sent her the following e-mail:

Ciao Adriana,
Ho appena visto le terribili immagini di Genova sull’internet. Voi come
state? Qui per ora va tutto bene, ma si vive nella paura.
Un abbraccio
Serena

Ciao Adriana,
I’ve just seen the terrible images of Genova on the internet. How are you?
At the moment everything is fine here, but one lives in fear.
A hug
Serena

Here is Adriana’s reply:

Ciao Serena,
il mio ufficio rimane proprio nella zona alluvionata.
Alle 13 si è iniziato a riempire di acqua il cortile interno del palazzo e
siamo riusciti ad uscire da un appartamento che ha un accesso secondario, con
l’acqua alle ginocchia ho raggiunto la stazione di Genova Brignole e con un
autobus in un’ora ero a casa ma non avrei mai immaginato che la zona che avevo
lasciato si trasformasse in un fiume…
..e ora piove ancora, che disastro …
siamo proprio tanto piccoli e fragili davanti a questi eventi …
grazie del pensiero …
ci sentiamo
Un abbraccio anche a voi…
Adriana

Ciao Serena,
My office is right in the middle of the flooded zone.
At 13.00 the internal courtyard of the building began to fill with water and
we managed to get out from an apartment that has a secondary access, with
water up to my knees I arrived at Genova Brignole station and I got home an
hour later by bus, but I would never have imagined that the area that I left
would become a river…
…and now it’s raining again, what a disaster…
we are really so small and fragile in the face of these events…
thanks for thinking of me…
we’ll be in touch
A hug to you two as well…
Adriana