The day my garden turned into a lake in Sicily

One Saturday recently we woke up to find a lake in our garden. It had appeared overnight.

The cracks in the earth created by the summer heat were gone. Replaced now by shimmering water that was soaking the ground and moving towards our actual lake as the ground fell in that direction. Thankfully, our own lake has an overflow pipe, otherwise the damage to the property could have been far more extensive.

Where had it come from? With no rain for months, this was not that. On closer inspection, the water was gushing from a large pipe used for agricultural water, provided by the province. It is a service we do not use because the supply is not guaranteed, especially in the height of summer when you need it most. We have our own well water, which we put through an osmosis system for all our water needs.

So there we were. A water leak in Sicily. Flooded by a service we do not even rely on.

Step one: call the municipality

The first thing I did was try and contact the municipality to ask which office to call.

Their published number, the main switchboard number that appears everywhere, is no longer in service.

This was not a good start to a problem that would soon go from bad to worse.

Twenty phone calls and no jurisdiction

Over the next few days I tried several other municipal numbers that were still technically “in service”, but no one ever answered them.

I went online to see if there was an emergency number for water leaks. I phoned those too.

Same empty silence.

I started to wonder if everyone had been raptured and we had been left behind.

I was relieved to discover that was not the case when I phoned Civil Defense and someone finally answered. Joy quickly turned to disappointment when the woman told me that yes, she was the person responsible for taking emergency water calls, but no, this was not her jurisdiction.

This was a provincial matter, not a local matter.

She suggested I phone the municipal police.

I did. Twice.

Both times they told me they could not help.

By this point I must have phoned twenty different offices. Finally, someone agreed to come out to the property, but only if I sent my location via WhatsApp.

No sooner had it transmitted when he phoned and said, sorry, this is outside my area.

Meanwhile, the farm caught fire

During the week we also had a particularly bad fire on the farm. One of six in four weeks, but that is a story for another day.

After the fire had been put out, we asked the fire brigade if they could take a look at the burst pipe and phone someone.

They were amazed at the amount of water gushing from it.

A call was made. The conversation was short, but there was a lot of yelling.

After they left, we had no idea if anyone had agreed to come and sort out the problem, or not.

The “correct” office, and the wrong timeline

After phoning friends in the area and asking for advice, I finally managed to lodge the problem with an office who said they were the correct department.

The only catch was that they were not exactly sure when someone would be available.

By then, a week had passed. Thousands of litres of perfectly good agricultural water were sitting on my land, being enjoyed by my olives and the local bird population.

The poor farmers further down the line were definitely not so lucky.

Desk pounding works when you have a water leak in Sicily apparently

Three more days passed. At that point my husband and I decided enough was enough.

We got into the car and started pounding on desks.

It worked.

By the time we returned home, a trio of men were outside the gate waiting for us. They had come from the very office we had just left.

After much debate between themselves, they agreed they would return on Monday. It was now Friday midday, and apparently too late to start any new works. Would they not turn the water off further up the line, we asked, knowing how Sicilian farmers are always desperate for water during the summer when pipes run dry. No, but they would definitely come on Monday.

A patch to fix the water leak

Monday arrived. They started pumping water out of the chamber where the burst pipe sat, so they could access the damage.

Once the chamber was dry they had a look, discussed it again, and then said they would be back the following day with an excavator.

My husband, an engineer, reminded them that by the following day the chamber would have refilled and they would have to pump it out all over again.

There was a lot of grinning, nodding, and shrugging. Off they went.

They returned the next morning. Of course my husband was right, so the pump sprang into action once again, before the excavator finally arrived.

Mounds of earth began to rise as the hole became larger and larger.

My husband asked if they were going to replace sections of the piping, because it was clearly beyond repair. It was thoroughly rusted, and any patch would only be a temporary solution.

Oh no, they said. They would weld it and patch the hole. There was no budget for renewing that section with new pipework.

Did they want to pressure-test the pipe before they filled the hole back in, asked my engineer husband.

No, no, it will be fine, they said, with confidence.

The next morning

This morning we woke up.

We have a lake in the garden.

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