Floods, rain-soaked deaths. Without prevention, without landscaping. And arguing over warnings (photos and video)

Floodwaters can be exceptional: in just a few hours, the same amount as months of rain falls. But where are the municipalities' plans? Why do weather warnings always end in a fight between municipalities and the Civil Protection Department? How important are land destruction and global warming?

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plan to prevent floods and earthquakes

EARTHQUAKE, LANDSLIDE AND FLOOD PREVENTION PLAN

When a blow hits your head water bomb of 250mm in 12 hours, or 110 litres of rain per square metre, as happened in Livorno, Rome, Genoa And in many other parts of Italy, it's clear that these are potentially devastating floods. However, we're not just talking about heavier than normal rainfall, as often happens, but also about a quantity of rain that usually occurs over the course of several months, but here it's concentrated in just a few hours.

Having clarified the issue of flood events, we cannot, however, consider that there are people, including the elderly and children, who continue to die in Italy (six victims in Livorno, including a 4-year-old child) due to the rain. This is neither acceptable nor understandable. And it only means that the Flood prevention, instead of making progress, we are going backwards. Frighteningly behind. And here the blame for the waste of human lives, as well as for the protection of the territory, lies with us, men and women, and not with the events.

The primary prevention against floods, earthquakes, and landslides is, in fact, the care and maintenance of the land. This is essential in a country like Italy, where over 80 percent of municipalities are at risk of hydrogeological disasters. As many as 24 schools are at risk of earthquakes. A country where every time a disaster or natural disaster strikes, there is a constant shift in blame and responsibility.

 

ALSO READ: Rigopiano massacre: warnings ignored by a state that always intervenes haphazardly.

 

Plan to prevent floods and earthquakes

Secondly, there exist, or rather: there should exist, municipal plans approved by the Civil Protection. As some data published a few months ago in the weekly magazine Oggi show, about 20 percent of Italian municipalities do not have a municipal emergency plan, which by law should be passed on to the Civil Protection Department for necessary intervention in the event of a natural disaster, be it a flood or an earthquake. What does this gap in the prevention system mean, a word we so often hear when we count the deaths of Fate? Simple: in the face of any emergency in these municipalities without a plan, no one knows what to do, citizens are left in disarray, and the intervention of the Civil Protection becomes complicated from the first moment, since it will then be necessary to do it ad horas An emergency plan, with a huge waste of resources, means, and men. And sometimes lives. Only to then console us, another collective ritual of do-it-yourself Italy, sanctifying the usual heroes of the day, the angels who clean up our mess, and our poor, routine administration.

MUNICIPAL EMERGENCY PLAN

The more regions, territories, and municipalities are at risk, the higher the percentage of those who have done nothing in terms of prevention. Campania is entirely seismic, and must deal with the risk of Vesuvius: unfortunately, only 39 percent of municipalities have prepared a plan to deal with the emergency. The same goes for Sicily, where the figure rises to 49 percent. However, the southern regions (is this also Fate?), in general, are far from Lombardy, where 78 percent of municipalities have done their duty. Now you'll also want to know the reasons for this abdication of their role by so many mayors and administrators, in a country where seismic risk, to name just one example, affects the vast majority of municipalities. I tried asking a few mayors this question, and I assure you that not even two of them gave me the same answer. Some people bring up the usual story of a lack of resources, others say the plan is in the approval process and has been stalled due to political conflicts that need to be resolved, others justify themselves by citing some municipal office manager who retired, resulting in the paralysis of a part of the municipal machine.

PLAN TO PREVENT NATURAL DISASTERS

Do you know what I think of these answers? They're all bullshit. That is, we know well that municipalities are always short of money, but they cannot give up an absolute priority of their mandate, of their function: namely guaranteeing the safety of citizens In the event of a disaster. It's as if they were saying that, given the waste disposal problems, they're giving up on garbage collection. Rather than justify themselves, they should simply resign and go home without touching anything, otherwise they'd be in trouble, given their incompetence.

TO KNOW MORE: Earthquake and reconstruction. Will we be able to escape the tunnel of corruption?

LANDSLIDE AND FLOOD PREVENTION

And finally, there are the forecasts and warnings, which are now more than reliable. And on this front too, we have become, in the event of every flood, masters of passing the buck, starting with the municipalities against the Civil Protection Department, which is the opposite of what should happen. This is what happened in Livorno, where Mayor Nogarin criticized the alert level—orange, not red—issued by the Civil Protection Department. This difference, according to the Municipality, led to the implementation of a different safety plan than would have been the case in the event of a red alert. For its part, the Civil Protection Department clarifies that its role is to issue the alert, and it is then up to the municipalities to decide on the appropriate measures.

In Capital completely on tilt because of the heavy rain which brought the city to its knees with completely flooded streets, fallen trees, closed metro stations, entire neighborhoods without electricity, the solution envisaged by the Campidoglio was instead that of invite citizens to limit their movements «in cases of emergency» avoiding «parks and green areas». And in the 10th Municipality, in the Infernetto and Dragoncello neighborhoods, it was the residents who took to the streets and independently took care of cleaning the manholes.

Not to mention the effect related to the global warming which, in this case, is not just a national issue, we are terrifyingly underestimating. We are not yet on the brink of a catastrophe, but immediate intervention is necessary, as we explain. here.

FLOOD PREVENTION

The truth is that these "distracted" administrators should be taken by the ears, one by one, by a national and central authority—a Minister, a Prime Minister, a Head of Civil Protection—and made to face their responsibilities. Either they write the municipal emergency plan, within the deadline set by law, or they go home and the municipality is dissolvedThen you would see these unintelligible politicians, devoid of both attributes and competence, snap to attention, ready to sign off on plans. Instead, in the chaos of that gray area separating local and national powers, incompetent administrators (we have many, many who are actually very good and very competent) do as they please. And they don't care about the emergency and the potential risks to their citizens in the event of a disaster. In any case, at worst, and if it were to happen to them, there's always Fate to invoke.

EVERY TIME WE DESTROY THE TERRITORY:

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