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

TRAGEDY OF RIGOPIANO –

A hotel built on rubble, with a series of permits that don't add up. An emergency managed with a series of delays, underestimations, and unnecessary overlapping of roles. The Rigopiano tragedy, unfortunately, is increasingly taking on the shape of a dramatic paradigm of Italy where everyone commands and no one commands, and where lawlessness and the devastation of the territory are the order of the day.

RIGOPIANO: ERRORS IN RESCUE –

The chain of errors and waste is long, very long . Listing, one after another, the various bodies involved from the first to the last alarm issued from the Rigopiano hotel, we enter the Knossos labyrinth of corporate bureaucracy in Italy. A country where the state machinery, when it moves, both within and outside of ordinary administration, always does so in disarray, each locked within its own compartment of competence, without a shred of coordination, direction, or clarity regarding roles and responsibilities. Without ever having one person, a single person, holding the key to the entire mechanism. An example? The first phone call, on that cursed Wednesday, January 18th, asking the Province of Pescara for a turbine to reach the hotel and evacuate it, dates back to 7:00 a.m.; but almost 12 hours had to pass before, at 6:00 p.m., the same request reached ANAS . In between, in the black hole of precious hours, there are phone calls, emails, faxes, alerts. So many people are involved, and meanwhile the deadly avalanche can begin its tragic path undisturbed.

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HOTEL RIGOPIANO INVESTIGATIONS –

While three lines of investigation are underway (never a single investigation...), we have already understood the gravity of the error of underestimating an SOS signed by the hotel manager and addressed to the Prefect of Pescara, the president of the province, the provincial police command, and the mayor of Farindola. Everyone and no one, in this macabre and Pirandello-esque rush for help. The Pescara prefecture official who classified the alert as a "hoax" was certainly superficial and irresponsible , to say the least. But if we don't want to file the case away with a perfect scapegoat, let's ask ourselves: Is this the only error? And again: What chance was there of an effective and timely response? I'd say little more than zero.

This random communication chain overlaps with a sequence of actors and extras who never act, except in the final phase of the emergency, in coordination. Any service that translates into assistance to the citizen, whether for an avalanche or a hospital admission, is sucked into this spiral of numbers, acronyms, and commands that are more virtual than real. The Rigopiano emergency call hit the wall of 118, 112, and 115, without any of these numbers having even the slightest hint of a solution, or even a complete understanding of the problem . The traffic police, the Forestry Corps, the Alpine Emergency Department, and the Fire Brigade all took to the field, always in no particular order. And then there were mayors, presidents of various agencies, councilors, and Prefecture officials. The mountain of a gigantic public apparatus has given birth to the little mouse of immobility, failing even, in twelve hours, to put a turbine into action.

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RIGOPIANO MASSACRE –

If you think about it, it's the same infernal and self-destructive mechanism that kicks into gear in the face of a health emergency, like the one we saw in connection with the unfortunate images of patients on the ground at the Nola hospital . You call one emergency number, and you immediately have to dial another: there isn't a single region in Italy with a single 118 coordination center . Even hospitals in the same area aren't networked; woe betide those united under the same command; you risk losing power, autonomy, and, even worse, you risk being judged based on your respective capabilities. Better for everyone to protect their own fiefdom, a niche where they feel in control without any oversight or real accountability. By dint of dividing up responsibilities, roles, and interventions, we have eliminated, as a State and as a country, any culture of organization , and we have been consistent in this cupio dissolvi to the point of weakening, in terms of resources and personnel, and in terms of command perimeter, even an excellence like the Made in Italy Civil Protection . Under these conditions, the state apparatus is doomed to fail to deploy at the right time and with the right people . Then we are also capable, as always, of becoming heroes like those firefighters who saved lives with their courage and professionalism. In those days, while they were digging in the snow, the state organization didn't even provide them with a hot meal. For them, for these young men whom we immediately rushed to sanctify with national-popular rhetoric, only sandwiches were provided.

TRAGEDY OF RIGOPIANO:

( Image source: National Alpine and Speleological Rescue Corps CNSAS )

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