SENIGALLIA – Downstream the alert had not yet been triggered but in Sassoferrato, 400 meters above sea level from 19.30 on 15 September it was already hell for the flood. In Sassoferrato, just over six thousand inhabitants, also live Maria Memoli, her partner Alessio Tassi and Melissa, daughter of Maria. They were saved by a human chain made up of five carabinieri and the mayor Maurizio Greci.
Alessio, 44, is in hospital with pneumonia. The violence of the water and the wind dragged him into a cellar: “There was a moment when I thought it was over, I decided to let myself die. I had swallowed too much water and mud ”.
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Alessio was betrayed by bad weather, on his return from his company that produces industrial hoods. When he arrived on the street, in via Cagli, he saw his partner with her daughter, 14, on the sloping roofs.
“He tried to reach us – says Maria Memoli, who does not detach himself for a moment from Alessio – and instead he slipped into that basement which in a short time flooded to the roof”.
When Alessio was sure he was going to die, the current dragged him towards an outlet of air. “I clung to some metal wires. I saw some lights. From that moment on I started screaming, ”he explains with difficulty from his hospital bed.
Maria and Melissa had been in the rain for an hour already. “Alessio was swept away by the power of the flood. I was desperate, I thought he was dead. We put our cell phones under our bras to protect them and we called for help ”, Maria cries. The Misa river overflowed towards the valley, dragging tree trunks with it and everything it encountered in its path. It was the commander of the Fabriano company who recalled all the carabinieri on duty. A patrol also arrived in via Cagli and the military heard the screams of Alessio Tassi. “I felt a hand grab me and pull me up – Alessio has vague memories – and then I found myself intubated in the hospital”.
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The carabinieri had managed to form, in five, a human chain and to hook a shovel to a car. So Alessio was saved. “I know that he is strong and he will make it,” says Maria Memoli, that she too feared for her daughter. Before the carabinieri arrived, the girl fell into a skylight from a height of three meters. She suffered some bruises, she too was hospitalized but now she is fine. “We have a devastated house and the grandeur of that flood – continues Maria – has also dragged our car away. But we are alive and this is what counts ”.