A thousand ghosts in Bardonecchia: “Safer here than down in the city” – La Stampa

Barricata – so to speak – in the hamlet of Les Arnauds, Mrs Silvia Bini is one of the thousand refugees from Bardonecchia. Calling them displaced from Turin – and more generally from cities – is technically wrong. Because Signora Silvia and all the other “non-residents” who are here have not run away from anything. They remained exactly where they were around February 20, when the Covid emergency became evident in all its seriousness. When schools have closed. And the children – already at home for the carnival holidays – found themselves catapulted into a new life.

Here, the new people of Bardonecchia are made up of families who have remained there since that Sunday. Moms and dads with children in tow. Grandparents with grandchildren.

In the morning you see them go shopping at the Carrefour in Borgo Vecchio or in the one in the center, right behind the most greedy place in the country, but now barred – the Ugetti pastry shop. You meet them in tobacconists and newsagents to make photocopies and print tasks for the little ones: “Madam, we are getting along with six sheets today.” That multiplied by one hundred people means more work, but modest earnings.

Excuse me mayor, how many tourists have stayed here since Carnival? Francesco Avato today would have a thousand other things to do, than not reason about the “extra” residents of the country. But, basically, estimating how many people there are means looking ahead, and trying to imagine summer. So let’s start with the numbers. “One thousand. But until we have done the calculation of the consumption of water and volume of waste produced, we have no certainty ».

Now, once the distrust of the first few days has passed, “indigenous and invaders” now live together in peace. Mayor, have you fined them? “Why never? They are vacationers. They respect the rules of social separation. They make the community feel alive ». Which now has a problem as big as a house: prepare for summer. Because if these are the refugees at the foot of the slopes today, by the time summer comes, they will be thirty times as much. And the 11 thousand and 300 second homes will fill up not for a few days waiting for the sea as in the past, but in a stable way. «We will go back to being a holiday resort, like twenty years ago. We have to find a way to live together safely “try to explain Avato. Because, if the kids aren’t leaving – or almost – home now, this summer will be more complicated.

Avato consults with epidemiologists and Polytechnic. He has ideas and plans. He watches over everyday life, speaking on the web radio invented by two local boys, making videos that he spreads on the web. Iron fist? No use. The uniforms take care of checking who gets into the car. And the road to Rochemolles is blocked by two large stones, it is not known how miraculously rained on the road.

The rest is done by common sense, or fear. A few days ago a boy came home terrified: «I was chased by a drone. I hid under a bush. I hope they didn’t recognize me. ” Now his mother laughs at us. And she told it to her friends. Who hears on the phone. Even if they live only on the other side of the country. And the drone that films kids is already legend. Another segregated, bored, probably piloted him. Or sadistic. –

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