Cinque Terre news: Flood devastates Vernazza, Italy
The before / after photos are horrible: the first, a postcard perfect Italian village, surrounded by pine green shutters and façades of lemon and rose through the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean. In the following, the same village in a terrible avalanche of mud, the port now bury the color and consistency of cement.
Flooding on 25 October by a sudden storm devastated the town of Vernazza, one of the five villages that make up the Cinque Terre in Liguria. The flow of water and mud through the narrow streets and steep cascade and buried the city with the lowest level in up to 13 meters of rubble, but also overwhelming tracks that the main way in or out of Vernazza set available. (Part of the stimulus Cinque Terre is that four of the cliff hugging villages accessible only by trail by train, boat or hiking are.)
Flooding (Cinque Terre have been spared the other villages) also wreak havoc on the nearby town of Monterosso, and forced the evacuation of thousands. Electricity, water and communications are not yet fully restored. And dig the long hard work of literally digging the two cities of the earth to overtaking just begun.
For those who want to help by making a donation to Vernazza, a nonprofit organization, a group of American expatriates who founded all long-term residents of Vernazza, raising funds for the reconstruction of the city and the conservation of memories.
As I am sure that many T + L readers may well, I can remember very well before I met for the first time in Vernazza, 21 summers. I walked down the Monte Rosso was, and as I rounded the hill and saw Vernazza is captivating port set, my first reaction was to laugh out loud: Are you kidding?
How many American visitors, I would be the Cinque Terre of the travel writer Rick Steves, long Europe’s villages through the back door has learned included. Rick gave a moving tribute to Vernazza on its site, and reminds us that, together with a contribution to Vernazza, can provide the best support to save the passengers is to keep the Cinque Terre on our tours.