The New York Times - USA (2020-12-07)

A6 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2020

Tracking an OutbreakMourning the Dead

Bergamo, like everywhere, now
confronts a second wave of the vi-
rus. But its sacrifice has left it bet-
ter prepared than most places, as
the widespread infection rate of
the first wave has conferred a
measure of immunity for many,
doctors say. And its medical staff,
by now drilled in the virus’s awful
protocols, are taking in patients
from outside the province to alle-
viate the burdens on over-
whelmed hospitals nearby.
But even as contagion still
threatens them from without, the
wounds of the first wave gnaw at
them from within.
Talking about these things does
not come easily to people in Italy’s
industrial heartland, jammed with
metal-mechanic and textile fac-
tories, paper mills, billowing
smokestacks and gaping ware-
houses. They prefer to talk about
how much they work. Almost
apologetically they reveal that
they are hurting.
In the town of Osio Sopra, Sara
Cagliani, 30, can’t get over her fail-
ure to fulfill her father’s dying
wish.
A sign on her home’s gate reads,
“Here lives an Alpine soldier.”
When the coronavirus crisis be-
gan, her father, Alberto Cagliani,
67, offered his help, telling his
daughter, “ ‘Remember, I’m an Al-
pine soldier, and we show up in an
emergency.’ ”
After retiring as a truck driver,
he had volunteered for a funeral
home, driving around the prov-
ince, retrieving the bodies of men
killed in auto accidents and dress-
ing them in suits given by their
families. In February, he volun-
teered again, but this time the
body count was overwhelming.
He became taciturn and
stopped coming home to eat. “A
slaughter without end,” he told his
daughter. On March 13, after tend-
ing to another victim, he felt a pain
in his right shoulder that spread to
his lower back. His voice weak-
ened. The sound of the television
bothered him. On March 21, his
wife saw him touching the bath-
room towels just to see if he could
feel them. His fingertips had gone
numb. His legs followed. He died
of Covid the next day with water in
his lungs.
His last wish was to be buried in
his Alpine soldier’s uniform, and
his daughter sought to honor that,
sending the green jacket and
pants to the funeral home. The
morticians sent them back, ex-
plaining that the fear of contagion
made dressing bodies impossible.
“To put him in a sack, this is my
greatest regret,” Ms. Cagliani said
through tears, adding that she had
started seeing a psychologist and
that the tragedy had changed
many in her close-knit town.
“People are scared to see one
another,” she said. “There is a lack
of affection, of touching and hold-
ing.”
Others are haunted by the hor-
rible choices the virus forced them
to make.
In the middle of March, Laura
Soliveri began taking care of her
mother who had developed Covid
symptoms in the Bergamo town of
Brignano Gera d’Adda. The doc-
tors told her they didn’t have
masks and would not come check
on her. Her brother, a pharmacist,
warned her not to allow their
mother to be taken by an ambu-
lance or be brought to a hospital,
because the family would never
see her again.

Ms. Soliveri, a 58-year-old

grade-school teacher, scoured the

area for available oxygen tanks to

slake her gasping mother’s thirst

for air. Finally they found her one.

Her mother improved.

Then Ms. Soliveri’s husband,

Gianni Pala, got the virus, too.

She and her family scrambled

to find more oxygen, this time for

him. They couldn’t take it away

from her mother. His condition de-

teriorated and he required hospi-

talization. He died, age 64, on

April 5. Her mother, 85, survived.

“My mother had the oxygen but

we couldn’t take it from her to give

to him,” said Ms. Soliveri, who has

also started seeing a therapist and

taking antidepressants and fid-

dling with her husband’s wedding

ring, which she now wears on her

middle finger. “I would have done

it.”

The virus has tested some peo-

ple’s faith — Ms. Soliveri has said

she had lost her ability to pray —

and fortified it in others.

Over the summer, Raffaella

Mezzetti, 48, a volunteer for the

Catholic charity Caritas, said the

church had become a balm for the

traumatized. But she said she still

got chills when she heard the jin-

gles of the ads that were on TV at

the time. The sirens of ambu-

lances, which she said were may-

be bringing women to the hospital

to give birth, made her nervous.

“It sticks with you,” she said.

On the Day of the Dead in Nem-

bro, a volunteer pressed sanitizer

onto the hands of hundreds of be-

reaved entering the cemetery to

listen to Father Cella.

Delia Morotti, 57, who con-

tracted the virus herself, left the

Mass early. She said hearing the

names of all the dead infuriated

her. Both her parents were among

them.

“They didn’t deserve this. First

my father died. And then my

mother,” she said. “I’ve been see-

ing a psychologist for months.”

Others have found more self-de-

structive ways to cope.

Doctors at the Pesenti Fenaroli

hospital, which served as a critical

incubator for the contagion, said

they had seen a spike in patients

for substance abuse issues.

Around the province, psycholo-

gists have reported a rise in anxi-

ety and depression.

The nurses taking care of those

patients and the province’s other

sick are no longer the objects of

outpourings of affection.

“It’s not like it used to be,” said

Katia Marcassoli, a nurse at Pe-

senti Fenaroli. People had

stopped calling the nurses to ex-

press solidarity and to ask how

they were coping. Instead pa-

tients called with anger about

their appointments canceled for

other procedures. “There’s a lot of

anger.”

The medical crisis delayed Gio-

vanni Cagnoni from getting his

stomach pains checked out. When

doctors properly examined him,

they discovered he had a rare can-

cer, liposarcoma, concentrated

around his kidneys. By the time he

got a surgery date, in August, it

had metastasized and was no

longer operable.

“The hospitals weren’t taking

anyone,” he said in his home in

Gazzaniga, where he sat in front of

a fire with his two daughters.

The Cagnoni family had already

been through an inferno, the mi-

nutiae of which the 76-year-old

former military police command-

er punctiliously noted in a green

notebook titled “Chronicle of

Covid-19.”

On March 8, his wife, Mad-

dalena Peracchi, felt a chill on a

walk. Over the next 11 days, he

registered her fevers (99.32, 97.7,

100.4) and then on March 19 her

condition plummeted and a team

of ambulance workers in hazmat

suits entered their home and took

her away.

On March 20, her brother called

to encourage them “and died that

evening.”

On March 29, Mr. Cagnoni noted

“Daylight Saving Time” and that

doctors had called to tell him his

wife’s time had all but expired.

March 30 was “interminable,” he

wrote, and he received no news.

On March 31, he called the hospital

and learned his wife had died the

night before.

“They forgot to call us,” the blue

script reads. On April 11, as his

daughter Monia recovered from

the virus, Mr. Cagnoni’s diary

noted his first stomachache.

So many families had lost rela-

tives that when Bergamo came

out of the monthslong lockdown in

the summer, many people discov-

ered that their friends and neigh-

bors had vanished. But there was

also a palpable desire to move on.

Father Cella ran a summer

camp. Children played in front of

the sprinklers at Nembro’s town

hall. And even as fear lurked in the

air like poisonous droplets, people

in the capital city of Bergamo ten-

tatively ventured out.

In July in Piazza Pontida, where

“We Are Bergamo” signs hung de-

fiantly from the buildings, Ro-

berta Pedretti, 52, went out for an

aperitif with other nurses with

whom she had become close dur-

ing the trench warfare of the cri-

sis.

She looked around at the people

filling the bars and restaurants.

“Bergamo is trying to come

back but it’s full of fear,” she said

then. “It saw too many cadavers.

It can’t be like before.”

In the autumn, cases exploded

again, and in November a curfew

snuffed out Bergamo’s flickers of

social life.

The funicular railway and the

winding staircase that led up to

the medieval hilltop town were

both deserted. The restaurants

were closed. Patrol cars threw

blue siren light on the stone walls

as they monitored the streets for

gatherings.

The “We Are Bergamo” signs

had turned weather-beaten and

torn.

ITALY

Province Hollowed Out by Covid Struggles to Cope With Trauma

From Page A

Bergamo, Italy, in October. The province was ravaged by the coronavirus early in March, and apprehension about other people, survivor’s guilt and anxiety persist.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY FABIO BUCCIARELLI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Cinzia Cagnoni and her father, Giovanni, at home. “I need people more than ever,” she said.

Emma Bubola contributed report-
ing from Bergamo and Rome.

JERSEY CITY, N.J. — Of all the
toxic dumps in New Jersey, per-
haps none was more infamous
than PJP Landfill.
It was here, at the edges of the
Hackensack River in Jersey City,
that underground fires erupted
spontaneously for more than a
decade, belching acrid smoke so
thick it could snarl traffic on an ad-
jacent bridge, the Pulaski Skyway,
a key link for commuters to New
York City.
Firefighters tried dousing the
smoldering land in the mid-1980s
with 300,000 gallons of water a
day, but residents complained that
the spraying did not help.
A reputed mobster who had
used the property when it was
owned by the Roman Catholic
Archdiocese of Newark even
claimed that it was the final rest-
ing place of the world’s most noto-
rious Teamster: Jimmy Hoffa.
That was then.
Now, 30 years after the dump
was held up as the poster child for
toxic nightmares by the New Jer-
sey congressman who wrote the
Superfund law, plans for a
phoenixlike rebirth await.
It is about to be added to the

ranks of wastelands reinvented as

wonderlands, joining Fresh Kills

on Staten Island, Mount Trash-

more in Virginia and Sai Tso Wan

Recreation Ground in Hong Kong.

The site, which was designated

a Superfund priority in 1983, is be-

ing converted into a public park

with one of the nation’s first me-

morials to victims of Covid-19.

As part of a $10 million make-

over, more than 500 trees will be

planted in a grove of the newly

named Skyway Park — one for ev-

ery Jersey City resident who has

died of the coronavirus, the may-

or, Steven M. Fulop, announced on

Thursday.

Each person’s name will also be

included on a memorial wall, giv-

ing relatives of the dead a place to

mourn. Many families were un-

able to observe traditional funeral

rituals as the pandemic ravaged

the Northeast.

“We wanted to do something

significant for those families that

didn’t get to grieve properly, and

we’re taking a step forward in that

direction,” Mr. Fulop said. “It has

been a tough year for the city.”

For him, the pain is personal.

His grandmother died of Covid-19,

and the City Council lost one of its

members, Michael Yun, to the vi-

rus in April.

Vernon Richardson, who was

an aide to Mr. Yun, said the park

would “represent the resiliency of

the city — everyone from those

who died to those who loved them

to those who just had a bad 2020.”

The site, polluted by hazardous

chemicals when it was used as an

industrial landfill in the 1970s, has

been remediated and capped to

make it safe for visitors, but extra

soil will be brought in for planting.

Once the park is complete —

likely next summer or fall — walk-

ways will wend along the river,

through a pollinator garden and

beside green spaces lined with

flowers and reedy grasses native

to the low-lying wetland area. A

pedestrian bridge designed in the

image of the Pulaski will connect

two sides of the 32-acre site, which

is bisected by a stream known as

the Sip Avenue Ditch.

A formal Covid-19 memorial in-

stallation will be erected beneath

the bridge; visitors will be able to

walk between the rows of trees on

paths that run perpendicular to

the main promenade.

“To come into Jersey City from

this west side, and to see a grove

of trees, is going to be a beautiful

thing,” said Mira Prinz-Arey, a

Jersey City councilwoman.

The idea for the park was

planted more than 12 years ago

when Bill Matsikoudis, the city’s

former top lawyer, proposed buy-

ing the property. The $12.7 million

purchase was finalized in 2012.

“To see a place that constituted

one of the most polluted parcels in

the United States of America be

returned to nature — a place

where trees and wetlands and

egrets can make a home — is ex-

traordinary,” said Mr. Matsik-

oudis, who ran for mayor against

Mr. Fulop, a fellow Democrat, in

2017.

The memorial grove of trees,

Mr. Matsikoudis added, is “fitting

in so many ways.”

“They’re a sign of life,” he said.

“They’ll bring oxygen into a com-

munity that was choked for so

long.”

A public housing complex sits

across a four-lane highway from

the landfill, at the edge of the Mar-

ion neighborhood, an historically

Italian enclave.

Decades ago, neighbors held

community meetings and demon-

strations, demanding action that

eventually paved the way for

emergency funds that were used

to put out the fires for good.

On Thursday, as politicians and

environmentalists gathered next

to the river, they invoked that past

and noted that the wheels of envi-

ronmental justice often turn

slowly.

“In a sad way,” said Bill O’Dea, a

Hudson County commissioner

who was on the Jersey City City

Council in the 1980s, “you have to

wait 35 years to see the end of that

process.”

The park is a key element of a

longer-term goal: creating a walk-

way along the Hackensack River

that would stretch more than 10

miles from Bayonne north to Se-

caucus. A similar planned walk-

way, the Hudson Essex Greenway,

would connect Jersey City, Secau-

cus, Kearny, Newark, Belleville,

Bloomfield, Glen Ridge and Mont-

clair.

Bill Sheehan, who leads the

Hackensack Riverkeeper, a non-

profit environmental group, noted

the importance of creating open

vistas in communities crowded

with tall buildings. Eagles, he said,

now nest in nearby Kearny.

Still, the site’s industrial past is

never far from mind.

The Pulaski’s 3.5-mile black-

steel span and smokestacks from

a power plant across the river

dominate the horizon. Planes

headed to and from nearby New-

ark Liberty International Airport

leave streaks of smoky white en-

trails in the sky. The adjacent lots

hold an imposing distribution

warehouse and an e-commerce

company.

And, just maybe, Hoffa’s grave.

Phillip (Brother) Moscato, a re-

puted member of the Genovese

crime family who grew up in Jer-

sey City’s Marion section and died

in 2014, reportedly said in inter-

views that Hoffa was buried in a

plot under the Skyway, inside a 55-

gallon drum. The body of the

Teamsters union boss, who disap-

peared in 1975 near Detroit, has

never been found.

A half-mile away, a large sculp-

ture of a man holding a rolled-up

green carpet stands in the shadow

of the Skyway’s on-ramp, an im-

age made famous by its appear-

ance in the opening credits of the

HBO Mafia hit “The Sopranos.”

Steve Krinsky, chairman of the

Skyway Park Conservancy, said it

was time to bury that sordid chap-

ter for good.

“Someday soon, Skyway Park

will be an open, natural area along

the shores of this awesome and

cleaner-than-ever river, a part of

the rebirth of the green coast of

Jersey City, a stop along the Hack-

ensack River Walkway and a

world-class park,” Mr. Krinsky

said. “Today is only the first step.”

NEW JERSEY

Park With Memorial to Covid-19 Victims Is Rising on Site of a Former Toxic Dump

By KEVIN ARMSTRONG

and TRACEY TULLY