A Ton of Mud for Every Inhabitant

The recent floods in Cumbria reminded me of this OOP title:

Florence: The Days of the Flood
Franco Nincini
Allen & Unwin Ltd
1967



A shocking photographic document of when the river Arno burst its banks in 1966. Much of Florence was flooded under several metres of river water with many lives lost. The aftermath left the city covered in tons of mud, oil and debris - a ton of mud for every inhabitant. 5,000 were homeless with food shortages, 6,000 shops out of business and 1,300,000 rare books and manuscripts in the Bibliteca Nazionale and 1,400 works of art were damaged.

There are moving accounts - citizens giving shelter to prisoners who had had to escape the flood over the rooftops, of a curator who risked her life to save Galileo's telescope, of monks who spent days going through the mud to recover minute fragments of colour washed from a Cimabue crucifixion and of tragic attempts to survive on upturned tabletop rafts.

At the back of the book are similar accounts - taken from extracts of OOP chronicles of previous historic floods from 1269 to 1844.










With one eye on the Copenhagen Climate Summit, OoPPs blog will dwell on all things climatic in December.