Telephone Vigil In Italian Floods

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28314, 27 June 1957, Page 16

Telephone Vigil In Italian Floods

RO VIGO (Northern Italy), June 25. Mrs Olga Cassani, a widow, aged 38, is alone in the abandoned village of Riva to-night, sitting in her second floor bedroom while the yellow, muddy flood waters of the river are swirling down the deserted streets. “The village is rather ghostly,” she told Reuter to-night over the telephone to which she is sticking in duty bound, as the village’s telephonist. “The police use this telephone and it may be wanted for an emergency call to flood control headquarters, so I must stay here,” she said. She was quite comfortable, she said, and had been provided with tinned food by the police who, she expected, would rescue her should the emergency arise. Water surged into Riva when an emergency dyke constructed across the fertile island of Ariano in the river delta, crumbled yesterday. To-night, half of Ariano was under water, and the flood was lapping at the second line of defence, a heavily reinforced internal dyke. At the same time, pressure increased dangerously-on the dykes of the swollen river Adige, which flows into the Adriatic parallel to the Po, only 10 miles to the north-east. Flood fighters were switched today to the low-lying land dividing the two rivers.