Francesca Scelfo

Fires and consequences

2023 - ON GOING, SICILY (ITALY)
"Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends." - cit. Joan Didion

Each summer and every year Sicily is under pressure.
After the wildfires in Sicily, some families in Palermo struggle to return to normal in their partially damaged homes. One of them expects a newcomer. Davide (33 years old) and Oriana (31 years old) bought this home 6 months ago. During the night of the wildfires they step away from the house. Oriana is pregnant and the city smelt of smoke. They agreed to move to the their parents’ house, just to prevent smoke inhalation for the baby to come. They didn’t expect that a part of the house would catch fire.

Another family saw the house completely destroyed with no possibility to rebuild. One is affected by cancer and still struggling with chemotherapy.
Some relatives are hosting them while they wait for some long-term solutions from the institutions.

A spontaneous assembly of citizens agreed on a brand new strategy to get the attention of the municipality and the region to be included in the decision making processes. Those activists call on the citizenship to supervise the promulgation of a multi annual plan to prevent wildfires.

In summary, the story tries to understand how families face these challenges and how they cope with precarious times, how communities and activists will react to this emergency.

In the meantime, how policy making legislations following the catastrophe.