The family of the house on the cliff: "It all came down, surreal"

The sheets still hanging after the laundry.

Not an oversight, but a tangible sign that no one expected such copious rain.

Instead "everything came down", as Enzo Botta recounts, the man who lived with his family, his wife and three children, in

that became the symbol of the Casamicciola tragedy.

All surprised by the flood at dawn.

“At a quarter past five I was already on my feet worried about the bad weather - says Botta - the electricity had gone out and only after that I began to hear a

, so I called everyone and told them to go down the avenue or at least in what little remained of the avenue”.

His wife and three children aged 12, 21 and 24 got ready in a hurry and all

while he alerted the police: "Come and get us, everything is collapsing here". 

The carabinieri were immediately activated, but "

and we remained outside in the avenue", says Botta, after the dramatic experience. 

“All five of us were in the rain, tightly packed, and we

, because it was difficult for the rescuers to reach us,” he adds.

Then he concludes: "In front of us was the abyss, everything had come down, it was like being in a film, surreal".

The photo of the house

, which has remained intact despite the fact that the terracing of Mount Epomeo is no longer there, is the living story of the tragedy: the bush interrupted by the building concrete, with the mud that rebels.

Now that they are all safe,

with all the other one hundred displaced persons, Botta is thinking about the future and hopes to return as soon as possible to his home which - he says proudly - "he built with so many sacrifices". 

But he doesn't want to hear about

, "everything is in order", he cuts short.   

The mayor of Lacco Ameno, Giacomo Pascale, reminds us that Enzo Botta's is not the only case: "In all of this dramatic story - he says - we only look at one photo, that of a crumbling house where there is no one around it is earthly.

But there are

”.