The guests of the retirement home return to Puos after sixteen months

Mobilization of EVA Alpago volunteers and civil protection to bring the elderly evacuated back to the facility on 6 December 2020

ALPAGO. The calendar had stopped at 6 December 2020, the day of the wave of bad weather that had brought the Belluno area to its knees and which in Puos had made the Valda stream overflow, flooding the retirement home with water and mud. No one had ever dared to touch it: it would only be changed when the elderly guests returned, hurriedly evacuated sixteen months ago with a host of ambulances and volunteers and distributed in half-province nursing homes.

And the time has come today, with a day of travel from Puos to Pieve di Cadore and back, to bring the largest group of elderly people back to the retirement home, the one who had been brought to RSA Marmarole. The volunteers of the Eva Alpago ambulances took care of it, who took care of transferring the bedridden elderly, while those able to walk were accompanied by minibus by the staff of the nursing home. The civil protection volunteers, with their truck, have instead thought of transferring materials and personal effects.

A long-awaited return home, by the elderly and by the staff of the Puos retirement home and of the Itaca cooperative who in these sixteen months have found themselves working in Cadore alongside the elderly. A return made possible now by the completion of the restoration works of the structure – which cost 1.6 million euros because the damage had proved much more serious than initially appeared – and which the Alpago Mountain Union has carried out in large part with the national civil protection funds, also having to overcome the slowdowns imposed by the pandemic, the scarcity of materials and bureaucracy.

In the coming days, guests who had been transferred to the retirement homes of Santa Croce, Ponte nelle Alpi and Lentiai will also gradually return to Puos.