Bridge collapses in Italy, for WWF a foretold disaster

A new curse afflicts Italy
In the last two weeks torrential rain caused many problems from north to south of the country obscuring the so called danger of the swine flu. Actually in Italy in last days the most important news dealt with Berlusconi’s young and nice female candidates for European elections and bad weather. Here a chronology of what happened:

22.04 in Apulia the A14 motorway is closed,
      in Molise the trains won’t move from the stations for 48 hours,
23.04 Naples, the city is paralysed because of the bad weather,
24.04 in Bologna the turning off of heating will be postponed to the 4th of May,
25.04 trains rerouted because of bad wheater,
26.04 sea storm on Romagna‘s coasts,
27.04 Landslides in Liguria, two people wounded,
      a truck tips over in Calabria, the A3 motorway is closed,
      landslides in Cuneo province (Piedmont),
      a person dies in Palermo (Sicily) hit by a branch of a tree detached by the tough wind,
28.04 danger of rivers’ overflow in province of Vicenza (Veneto),
      overflow of Lambro river and Martesana canal in periphery of Milan, underground out of order,
      snow in Calabria, 2 people trapped in their car surrounded by water in Apulia,
29.04 speedboat racing office on the Po river in Piacenza sank,
      roads shut in Aosta Valley,
      a sea storm makes damages in Ischia, an island near Naples,
30.04 bridge collapses near Piacenza (less than 100km south of Milan), many cars go into the Po river, three people wounded.

Monferrato, a wine region near Turin balances the books: floodings and landslides. This area was already hit in the catastrophic flood of october 2000. Agricultural Confederation of Cuneo, always in Piedmont, asks aids because of natural disasters (someone estimated the damages to the coltures reach 100 milion euros). For the low temperatures in many provinces of the north the central heating of apartment buildings will be kept turned on until May the 7th.
On the 1st of May the spate of Po (+7.5 meters over the normal level) is attended to Reggio Emilia, for this reason the region asked the Government to be put in state of emergency. Who would go out for the holiday of International Workers’ Day will probably find many flooded roads shut.

A foretold disaster?
In the opinion of WWF, the bridge collapsed near Piacenza is a case of foretold disaster, in fact, although already in 1994 and 2000 calamitous floods happened, nothing was done to make safer the water ways in the Po valley. The 2001 plans for the hydrogeological asset of the Po river are still unstarted but hundreds of thousand euros were spent to study new canalizations, when, WWF says, natural overflown areas recovery is the only solution. Italy, continues the WWF, is searching to do in hurry (since it’s the last in Europe) the hydrographic managing plan scheduled by the European Water Framework 2000/60/CE in order to keep the EU funding and not to pay charges. Only the Lombardy region, WWF reports, spent 150.000 euros for a feasibility study on a project of 40 years ago to channel the waters of Po river stealing other agricultural and forestal lands. In Italy a preeminent figure lacks and there’s a framgentation of competences, so at the end we don’t have organization.

Someone is saying all these damages are the demonstration that italian infrastructures are dangerous and everytime the bad weather arrives in our country there are too many risks. It’s only matter of luck if in the collapse of the bridge no one died.

Concerning the damages caused by banches of trees that kill people or demolish cars, WWF says that in many italian cities the pruning is made in the wrong way (sometimes it isn’t made at all). The municipal administrations don’t know how to manage the urban public parks.

What doesn’t work
I don’t want to talk about pollution and global warming. This winter was colder and snowy compared to the four of five before: I don’t read in this anything more then the natural fluctuations of winter. Others can support the idea it is a sign of something.
I guess the problem we have here has a different root: an excessive urbanization of the land. We’re going to build houses and an hospital in the Vesuvio crater too. One sixth of the Italian population or about 10 million people live in Lombardy (16.2% of the national population; 2% of the European Union population), making it the most densely populated region in Italy after Campania with a strong concentration in the Milan metropolitan area. Plains of Lombardy are almost covered by asphalt and reinforced concrete. The Milan metropolitan area defined by OECD and based on socioeconomic patterns counts 7,400,000 people dispersed over an area of about 12,000 km², it comprehends 8 provinces of Lombardy and 1 of Piedmont. Population density chart of LUZ (larger urban zones) says the Naples is the most dense city in Europe followed by Bucharest, Barcelona and Milan. It’s true that a city like London has about 12 millions inhabitants but it has a density that is 58% of Milan.

All these numbers to say that in my opinion we have so many problems, risks and damages not because the weather is changing (better ‘not only’) but also because we’re thickening too much, in too much little areas. In Turin and Milan, for example, rivers like Dora Riparia, Olona, Seveso and Lambro were buried to allow the building of houses, hospitals and factories above them. In a situation like this it’s not unpredictable that the city could become flooded every time it rains!
If in the past many errors were committed, maybe because of ignorance or maybe in good faith, today is unforgivable that administrations continue to allow people to build on high hydrogeologic risk areas, that hereabouts are many, in spite of any environmental regulation.

Umberto M. Meotto