The volunteers

«Friuli gives thanks and does not forget». Someone wrote it on the walls in the most dramatic days, certain that that gratitude would echo forever. And this has certainly been the case, because «the massive and rapid influx of volunteers coming from other Italian regions and beyond was certainly one of the newest and most interesting aspects of the post-earthquake period in Friuli», as was written in the pamphlet titled Friuli dalle tende al deserto? written by Robi Ronza.

Something similar had been seen only with the ‘mud angels’ who arrived in Florence for the flood of 1966, but on a very different scale. It had not, for example, occurred after the Belice earthquake of 1968. A strategic role in the very first management of rescue operations was played by amateur radio operators, who supported, working alongside it, the operations framework set up by the Special Commissioner. In the absence of telephone communications, with all civilian lines interrupted and military ones in serious difficulty, the contribution of amateur radio operators and of CB (Citizen’s Band) users, the so-called «baracchini», became fundamental. They were the ones who raised the alarm, acted immediately and ensured communications between mayors, the Prefecture and rescue services in the most severely affected areas. From the hours immediately following the earthquake, they arrived in their thousands from all over Italy and abroad to offer their support, setting up a mobile link from Emilia Romagna to support the only available repeater at the time, which was located on Mount Matajur.

The assistance provided by the “free radios” also proved invaluable: the new, independent radio broadcasters that were emerging in those months. The first, such as Radio Sound Trieste or Radio Friuli, played a communication role in the initial emergency; others joined in the following months, and they were important for daily life in the tent camps and in the provisional villages.

The mobilisation of volunteers was, overall, extraordinary. It began with emigrants and their descendants, brought together across the world by the network of “Fogolârs furlans”. People connected to Friuli for various reasons set off that very night, from every place, to come to the aid of friends, relatives or, quite simply, those who had lost everything.

From Milan, a first convoy was formed, consisting of around twenty vehicles from various Lombardy assistance associations, including the Pink-and-Light-Blue Cross, the White Cross, the Golden Cross, the Green Cross, and the blood donors of AVIS. They reached the disaster-stricken areas with ambulances and vans loaded with first-aid supplies, blankets, food, and the mobile resuscitation centre from the Monza motor racing circuit. One of the volunteers, Roberto Ghisi, at the time a medical student, recounted that he arrived with the convoy at the Prefecture in Udine in the afternoon of May 7. The two ambulances of the Pink-and-Light-Blue Cross in which he was working were destined for Gemona, where they would be joined the following day by a third ambulance. Immediately after arriving, during the night between May 7 and 8, they assisted several people at the Fanfani housing complex, extracted from the rubble an injured woman who was still holding her dead son, and took her to the Udine hospital. She survived. In the remaining four days of their stay in Friuli, Ghisi and his colleagues, in Gemona and in nearby centres, recovered around thirty victims. This is only the activity of one of the many groups that, on a weekly rotation, took turns arriving from Milan with vehicles loaded with tents and field kitchens.

Also from Turin, the Green Cross also made an ambulance available, supported by vans carrying tents and food supplies. From Varese, teams set off with earth-moving machinery, while from Lastra, in the province of Florence, an ambulance arrived accompanied by seven vehicles, including lorries and vans loaded with aid.

Half a century after the earthquake, it is impossible to mention all the examples of solidarity recorded at the time in Friuli. In Udine, volunteers reported to the coordination office set up at the Prefecture and from there were assigned to the disaster areas. Among the more structured associations that distinguished themselves in rescue operations, mention should be made of the National Alpini Association (ANA) and the Scouts. Already during the night of May 6, the ANA opened its Udine headquarters to coordinate assistance from its members. The national president, Franco Bertagnolli, immediately went to the affected areas and, having understood the seriousness of the situation, proposed to the executive council the establishment of eleven autonomous and self-sufficient work sites managed directly by the Association. By the end of May, intervention groups were formed by bringing together the national sections of the ANA. From mid-June to mid-September, more than 15,000 Alpini on leave worked on the sites, located in Magnano in Riviera, Buja, Gemona, Villa Santina, Majano, Moggio, Osoppo, Cavazzo, Pinzano and Vedronza. They restored 76 public buildings, repaired more than 3,000 houses and 63,000 square metres of roofs, and carried out environmental recovery works and hydraulic works. That summer, the ANA launched the campaign “This year the holidays of the Alpini are in Friuli”, and the response was massive. The activity of the Alpini was so outstanding as to persuade the United States Congress to entrust the ANA with the aid programme of the Agency for International Development (AID) for the construction of schools and centres for elderly people.

Thousands of Boy Scouts belonging to the two main groups — the Association of Italian Catholic Guides and Scouts (Associazione Guide e Scouts Cattolici Italiani — AGESCI) and the non-religious National Corps of Italian Young Explorers (Corpo Nazionale Giovani Esploratori ed Esploratrici Italiani — CNGEI) — arrived in the disaster areas. They came from all over Italy, as well as from other European countries, including Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg. They set up their own coordination centres and shared their expertise in setting up and managing tent camps equipped with field kitchens and mobile sanitary facilities.

AGESCI ensured, in two phases, the presence of 7,146 scouts. In the first phase, mainly dedicated to rescue operations, which began on May 7 and ended on June 30, more than 3,000 young people arrived in the disaster areas from sixteen different regions. In the second phase, which continued until October 3, a further 4,000 arrived. Overall, they ensured almost 40,000 working days. Operations were coordinated by the operations centre set up at the Carmine parish in Udine, in Via Aquileia, where AGESCI teams arrived and rotated, and by six base camps located across the territory, from which volunteers reached the earthquake-affected locations. Once the emergency had passed, the action of AGESCI scouts also became valuable for the rebuilding of the social fabric, through animation activities in which the protagonists were children hosted in the tent camps and in the temporary villages. In the summer of 1976, 24 summer centres were opened to welcome young people and remove them from a present marked by rubble and pain.

The volunteers of the CNGEI also operated in their thousands, from the morning of May 7 until August 30, through the coordination centre set up in the primary schools in Via Caccia in Udine. In addition to the main camp known as ‘Campo Mandi’ in Chiusaforte (‘mandi’ is the usual Friulian greeting), further camps were established in Nimis, Majano, Faedis and Avasinis. Workers from Lombardy also arrived at ‘Campo Mandi’, collaborating in the management of infrastructure in Chiusaforte and in Val Raccolana. The newly founded Italian section of the FSE, the Federation of European Scouts, also mobilised to deliver the aid collected by the Municipality of Rome to the Natisone valleys.

The Italian charitable organisation Caritas also responded immediately. Local churches around the world, coordinated by Caritas Internationalis, mobilised to assist those affected by the earthquake. As early as 8 May, Caritas Italy made a substantial sum of money available to those affected by the earthquake in Friuli, while the Diocesan Caritas of Genoa sent 30 large tents. The Italian Episcopal Conference (Conferenza Episcopale Italiana – CEI) launched a fundraising campaign on the first Sunday after the disaster to finance initial interventions, offering the hospitality of many families to those made homeless by the earthquake. To ensure continuity of assistance, Caritas organised twinning arrangements between Italian dioceses and affected parishes. Work camps were also set up to channel construction-specialist volunteers, ready to donate a month's work to the people of Friuli.

Meanwhile, in Udine, Archbishop Alfredo Battisti established two coordination centres for relief operations: one at the Archbishop’s Palace and the other at the Diocesan Assistance Organisation (Opera Diocesana di Assistenza - ODA) in Via Aquileia. He also urged priests to make the proceeds from the sale of votive offerings, not subject to the protection of the Superintendency, available. Monsignor Battisti personally asked all the bishops of Triveneto to send tents to Friuli that were large enough to accommodate families who had been left homeless. The same commitment was demonstrated in Trieste, where the Italian Catholic University Federation (Federazione Universitaria Cattolica Italiana – FUCI) collected materials and support for those affected in Torlano, Chialminis, Ramandolo, Villanova delle Grotte, Montemaggiore, Platischis, Debellis, Artegna, Sornico, Montenars and the Santa Maria Maddalena hamlet in Stella (Tarcento). The initiative was also joined by the youth movement of the Union of Istrians.

Further aid arrived from Catholic associations in Lombardy, in particular from Don Luigi Giussani's Communion and Liberation (CL) movement. At the invitation of Bishop Battisti, volunteers from CL, active in the ODA of Udine, set up relief and work camps in nine disaster-stricken municipalities: Gemona, Tarcento, Buja, Magnano in Riviera, Moggio, Nimis, Resia, Taipana and Venzone. Following the earthquakes in September, a support centre was opened in Lignano Sabbiadoro to provide aid to displaced people. At that time, there were about 2,000 volunteers from the association Comunione e Liberazione working in Friuli: numerically, it was the third largest group after the Alpine troops of the ANA and the Scouts. The relief effort was followed by a commitment to reconstruction, in particular with the cooperatives of the Upper Friuli Reconstruction Consortium (Consorzio Ricostruzione Alto Friuli – CoRAF), and the organisation of initiatives to give young people a sign of hope. On May 18, Don Antonio Villa, a friend of Don Giussani and canon of the Church of San Babila in Milan, arrived in Tarcento to be with the volunteers and organise recreational activities with the creation of a school. From that moment on, Don Villa never left Tarcento and Friuli.

The mobilisation of volunteers also transcended political boundaries. On May 8, the daily newspaper L'Unità reported on the enthusiasm with which many young members of the Italian Communist Youth Federation (Federazione Giovanile Comunista Italiana – FGCI) travelled to Friuli in an aid convoy organised by the Turin chapter of the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano – PCI), which departed from Settimo Torinese. Conversely, in an article in the daily La Repubblica on May 9, Paolo Guzzanti described how members of the Democratic Centre for the Coordination of Voluntary Relief, who «were carrying shovels and sleeping bags and had red scarves around their necks», were turned away from Friuli because they were considered undesirable. «We were only trying to fill the gaps in official aid and speed up the response», explained Toni Capuozzo, a well-known Friulian journalist and former member of the political movement Lotta Continua.

The influx of volunteers was so high that, especially in the case of unorganised groups, mayors were forced to impose certain management rules. Volunteerism can be a problem, «a brake must be placed on the chaotic arrival of unqualified personnel», Zamberletti observed.