November 1966
IN ITALY IT HAD been a wet autumn. The rivers were full and the ground saturated. At the beginning of November, swollen mountain streams in the north-east of the country caused landslides and destroyed bridges, cutting road and rail links. Rough seas burst through the dykes and large areas of the Po river valley were flooded. Venice was badly hit, the islands of Pellestrina and Sant’Erasmo being completely inundated. In Venice itself large famished rats were reported to have emerged from the sewers and attacked a group of children.
Italy was cut in half by the storms that raged from Sicily to the Brenner Pass. A pilot who flew across the centre of the country said it resembled a storm-tossed sea with only the tops of bell towers and tall trees breaking its surface.
On the afternoon of the third of November, while Prince Philip and his five companions were bagging nearly two hundred and fifty pheasants during the first shoot of the season at Sandringham, a series of torrential downpours fell on Florence and the surrounding hills. As night fell the rain became continuous and it did not let up till late the following day. By then over eighteen centimetres of rain had fallen.
A peculiar meteorological situation, much discussed on Italian radio in subsequent days, meant the rain and high winds were prevented from moving away. The Arno rose twenty feet in as many hours and finally burst its banks. The force of the flood was devastating. An unstoppable sea of chocolate-coloured water, mud mixed with oil from burst central heating systems, surged through the streets at up to forty miles an hour, hurling cars and even lorries into piles. In some areas the flood water was over six metres deep. On the Ponte Vecchio, the age-old jewellers’ shops were smashed. Cars, tree trunks and even bloated cattle plugged the gaping holes.
For twenty-four hours the city was virtually unreachable; it was without piped water, electricity and phones. The archives in the National Library were swamped with the toxic mix of mud and naphtha. On that first terrible night, volunteers formed human chains to hand the sodden books and documents to safety. For many of the city’s treasures, it was already too late.
On the evening of the fourth of November, as the rain eased and the flood waters subsided, a man was seen walking knee deep in mud; he was weeping. In his arms he carried the remains of an enormous wooden crucifix; he was followed by a sombre line of workmen, students and friars. Professor Ugo Procacci, superintendent of the Uffizi gallery, was carrying all that remained of the Crucifixion by Cimabue, the greatest artist of the thirteenth century. This irreplaceable masterpiece, ruined beyond repair, was to become the symbol of Florence’s tragedy.
The flood waters left in their wake a residue of slime and mud, cars and lorries stacked on top of each other, shops and houses in ruins. Ten days later, in the New Market piles of decomposing fish and vegetables had turned sections of the piazza into a giant compost heap, while behind the church of Santa Croce dead animals were still rotting where they lay.
Young people responded at once and gave what they could. School children, students and foreign visitors worked tirelessly in cold and wretched conditions. Over the following weeks their example was followed by youngsters from further afield in Italy, from Britain and Scandinavia, Canada and the States. They stayed to help with the clean-up for a few days or for months. In time these bands of youthful volunteers came to be known affectionately as Mud Angels. Or, occasionally, as Angels of the Flood.