It was 2am when the parish priest, Giovanni Samorì, was woken by a phone call from the mayor of Traversara ordering him to start ringing the church bells. The traditional call now forms part of the civil protection procedure deployed by many Italian towns. Its aim: to warn residents of impending calamity.
As torrential rain pounded the village, Samorì sprang into action, a task he compares to “sounding the death knell”. It worked: the evacuation of Traversara’s 480 residents was swift and, despite the priest’s foreboding, there were no deaths.
