The extremely high winds which ripped through this area on the night of the 4th and the morning of the 5th March has caused extensive damage, the extent to which is still being estimated (article here)
Some experts are being quoted is saying that the winds reached 150 km an hour. That figure is still to be verified but certainly wind gusts estimated at between 100 and 125 km an hour has left a trail of destruction with numerous houses sustaining damage to their roofs, powerlines brought down and literally hundreds of trees knocked flat.
A period of good weather since that morning has meant that the cleanup operation is well underway and electricity is back in all but 30 or 40 outlying houses up on the mountains. Most roads have now been cleared of fallen trees but there is one area which was hit hard by the wind and is now struggling to return to normal everyday life.
Sommocolonia, the tiny village which sits up at 710 metres above sea level situated above Barga to the north was right in the path as the wind came down the mountain.
In the lower part of Sommocolonia directly facing Barga, almost every house has suffered some kind of structural damage and just putting back a few dislodged roof tiles is not going to be enough to resolve some of the problems there.
Power is back on in the village but is running through cables, some of which have been ripped straight out of the walls of houses and one which is in fact still lying right across the main road – passing cars driving right over the live wire.
And there is one of the other large problems which will have to be resolved – the road, already a narrow winding strip of tarmac where two cars pass with difficulty – now it has been reduced even more as the large number of trees which were growing by the side of the road have more or less all been knocked over (luckily away from the road) but taking out large chunks of the tarmac as their roots were wrenched to the surface.