In the week since devastating floods and landslides hit Italy’s Cinque Terre, I’ve heard from many friends in the region. They tell me that the communities of Vernazza and Monterosso are in for a bleak, backbreaking winter of digging out and rebuilding, but they are determined to come back. This evening, Vernazza has been completely evacuated in anticipation of heavy rain in the next few days. Only the military is allowed in the town. An American-based fund for relief and reconstruction is being set up, and I hope to have details in a few days at www.ricksteves.com/news (where you can also see photos and videos of what’s happened). Keep Vernazza in your travel dreams.
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An American-based relief fund will be reassuring to those who feel Italy is increasingly tumultuous and not always a reliable place to send money. An American fund will also ensure the money gets to Vernazza and Monterosso versus some politician’s slush fund.
It’s time for North Americans to “Give Back to Cinque Terre”. You have been writing about it, escorting tour groups to it and featuring it in a number of your television shows. You are no doubt a major reason North Americans have made Cinque Terrre a destination on their personal Grand Tours. Perhaps it time to organize a “Give Back to Cinque Terre” telethon using the network of stations that regularily feature “Travel”. Use the footage from previous shows to show Cinque Terre as it was then, the You Tube material to show what happened, and a live feed to contrast as it is now. Consider using the best available location for the live feed, a roof top, the top of the fort in Vernazza, or Via de l’amore” whichever is the best accessable location.
Feature memories of Cinque Terre from your tour group leaders, participants, independent travellers who followed your suggestions, Cinque Terre ex pats now in North America…
Provide some expert commentary on how this flood of the millenium happened, weather, geography, man’s role etc. Did the mountains that protected the towns from mauraders in the past, funnel the energy of this freak storm down through the few narrow passes or did man’s role higher up in the hills play a role?
Show how natural disasters are a part of the Italian mosaic, volcanoes in Pompei, Sicily, earthquakes in Assisi and Aquila, tsunami in Amalfi, plague in Sienna, floods in Venice & Florence…
The Italian people are resilient, they have survived and rebuilt before. But given Aquila as an example the Italian government will not be much help. Therefore your readers, viewers and travellers have an opportunity to help. Pick a focal project, the restoration of the church in Vernazza or another historical building and adopt it as the short term goal of your telethon.
Follow the Obama example. Use your show, where it is currently running, your blog, newsletter, website, mail and e.mail lists from your prior tour participants, your publisher’s lists, your book buyers’ list, social media with your staff and network promoting the telethon on face book, by e.mail to those they know have been to or wanted to go there, and on Twitter.
See what is possible to “Give back to Cinque Terre”.
I’m so sorry to see the horrible damage of the Cinque Terra. It breaks my heart. It too is my favorite place in Italy. I stayed in Vernazza for 3 days once on a Rick Steves tour and then went back a few years later just to visit the most beautiful nostalgic spot in Italy. My heart goes out to those lifelong residents who’ve been displaced.