Tragedy of Udine, Patrizia’s mother: “Everyone took photos and no one saved them”

While trying to understand if the rescue efforts worked and if all the preventive measures had been adopted, Patrizia Cormos' mother lets out a bitter phrase: "Everyone made videos, no one saved them"

BOLOGNA – “Everyone made the videos and no one saved them“. This is the outburst of the mother of Patrizia Cormos, one of the girls who lost her life on Friday, swallowed up by the flood of the Natisone river, near Udine. The bodies of Patrizia and her friend Bianca Dorgos were recovered on Sunday morning, while Cristian, Bianca’s 25-year-old Romanian boyfriend, is still missing. After the shock of the tragedy, yesterday questions related to the rescue management of the three boys, who had gone to the pebble beach on the river and found themselves, within a few seconds, surrounded and blocked by the water which transformed the beach into a lake of mud due to the sudden flood of the Natisone river.

We are investigating not only the reconstruction of the calls requesting help (the first from Patrizia’s cell phone) and the choice to activate the farthest helicopter (and not the one very close to the site of the tragedy), but also on the fact that there were no warning signs along the river regarding the possibility of “flash floods”. Since the Natisone is often subject to this sudden flood phenomenon, in the aftermath of the tragedy we are wondering why this eventuality was not reported by signs as happens with other streams and rivers in Italy which present this risk.

There is also space, then, for the outburst of Patrizia Cormos’ mother, Mihaela, who yesterday while going to collect her daughter’s belongings was interviewed by reporters from the Veneto Messaggero: “Everyone they made videos and no one saved them”, is the bitter phrase that escaped this woman in the days of pain, as she left the house in Basaldella di Campoformido where Patrizia also lived. In reality, unfortunately, none of the people who witnessed the scene from a distance (in some cases making the video) could have done anything to save the three boys, who were trapped on a rock squeezed together in an attempt to resist the force of the water of the river in flood. At a certain point they couldn’t take it anymore and fell into the water, as unfortunately all of Italy saw.