Waiting Out the Flood Alert in Florence
Trying to get information and assess the level of risk
Catch the previous parts of the story about S’s birthday trip to Florence here and here.
I realized as I walked “home” that I had no local sources for what was going on with the red alert in Florence and it was tough to find much in English other than stories like this one from the BBC which had been written hours before:
So I messaged our boots-on-the-ground host* and asked for suggestions for more realtime information. She got back to me with several Instagram accounts to follow, all in Italian. She also explained that because there had been so much rain, there was a risk that that the Arno river (which runs through Florence and Pisa and out to the sea) could flood its banks. There was already flooding north of the city from another river that had overflowed.
Ooooooooooooh. Well, this did not sound good.
I managed to translate the gist of the Instagram posts. I even found a news station on TV that was covering things, though I only understood 5%-10-% of it. In general, though, it was hard for me to tell how much risk there really was. I mean, I knew northern Italy had flooded last fall, so I definitely took things seriously. (And my uncle survived a flood almost 10 years ago in Texas, so I know how quickly a situation can change.)
But also, part of me was wondering if we could still make our dinner reservation. You know, the Korean BBQ dinner that was the whole original reason for the trip? The restaurant was across town from where we were staying and not in the direction of the river, but it also wasn’t worth going if there was truly a danger of flooding. What to do?
The situation reminded me of being in Buenos Aires at this time last year. There was soooooo much rain, with flooding and risk of additional flooding. In that situation, Estefi had been able to keep us abreast of things (and provide context for the alerts), plus I could understand the news reports on TV (for the most part). But I felt a bit lost in Florence. It’s tricky when you don’t know an area well, don’t have local contacts you trust, and don’t understand the language well. This is one of the very real challenges of traveling the world when things go sideways (or have the potential to).
So I did what I tend to do: I tapped anyone else I could think of who might be able to provide context and information. I messaged another worldschooling friend in Italy and I also messaged our AirBNB host. (She was in Australia but had lived in Florence for a long time.) I didn’t look for an expat group to join online, though I thought about it. Shelby’s physical therapist messaged to check on us; he had also flown to Italy for the weekend, but he was in Rome.
None of this yielded much more information, but it helped me stay calm. I ended up asking our local host if she thought it wise to try to go to dinner and she said it would be best to stay close to the apartment. The river was expected to crest around 8pm (our dinner reservations were for 6:30pm).
I resigned myself to the situation and changed our Friday dinner reservation to a Saturday lunch reservation, hoping we’d actually be able to go then. We had tons of fresh pasta from the market and two bottles of wine, so we weren’t going to starve. (Far from it!) C and S were watching season 1 of Game of Thrones, so I joined them. All we could do was wait…
Have you been in a similar or comparable situation away from home, where you didn’t necessarily have access to a local network or the info you may have needed? What helped?
*It’s somewhat common for the official AirBNB host (the one you message with) to not be the one to meet you in person (assuming you meet anyone in person, as some properties around the world are self-checkin). If they are physically out of the area, they’ll have a local contact (often a manager of sorts that they’ve hired) meet you and be your boots-on-the-ground liaison.
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