After the disastrous floods in Emilia Romagna, the dead and the homeless Paolo Zanca, an old socialist enrolled in Action with a long career behind him, as a fine connoisseur of the local administrative machine, after years of silence decided to speak with Business Italians: “Dbetween 2015 and 2023, how many interventions to secure the territory have been carried out?”
“Where is the report of the things created by Bonaccini and Schlein to contain the floods? Here everyone talks but no one asks for the report. How come? It should be asked out of respect for those who died and those who lost everything. But do you know how the Civil Protection of Emilia Romagna works?
How does it work?
“It is a machine to be thanked, like all the various police forces who have intervened and all the volunteers, but for years the Region has shifted all the security of the territory to its regional civil protection”
But isn’t it only for emergencies?
“No, the Region wanted to create, they say, an innovative practice because intervention in emergencies must be combined with prevention and securing the territory. Very good. The question I feel like asking is: from 2015 to 2023 how many interventions to secure the territory have been carried out? We want in numbers, where and how they were made. Can this question be asked? Because there is a not negligible detail”
Which?
“By law, the civil protection budget of Emilia Romagna is drawn up by the civil protection manager with a determination, then passes to the first commission of the assembly for an opinion that is not binding, after which it is approved by the regional council but never passes to the Council regional”
So no one knows the details of the interventions and expenses?
“I ask you why they don’t go through the Regional Council”
Paul Zanca
How is it possible?
“I’m interested in practical things, not ideology. Since politics has become stadium support for the ultras, practical things disappear, what to do with the problems and what solutions. There is only the ‘I’m rooting for this, I’m with Schlein, you’re with Giuseppina’. It is the rotten apple of Italian populism which is now seasoned with climate change. But what interventions have been made and which ones, so far? Can you know? I’m not interested in religions”
Yet the bureaucratic apparatus of bodies such as the Civil Protection of Emilia Romagna exists and is it imposing or not?
Have you seen how many employees Bonaccini’s Civil Protection has?
Yes…
“There are thousands of volunteers but there are 500 of the regional agency and have you seen how many of these 500 are administrative bodies?”
So I’m in the offices …
“Nearly 50%. And what it means?”
That around 250 people should check every trickle of Emilia Romagna…
“And it also means that if I have a budget of 100, I make a hypothesis, I have to spend 50 to keep my institution alive. It means that every time I invest one euro I spend two to invest it. It is madness”
I would say total
“They write that since they made the 2015 reform they have hired 80 people here, 50 there and they have practically reached 500 employees but 240 are administrative”
Whose choice is it?
“Whose is it? They considered this to be the most effective way. Mine wants to be a constructive reasoning. But given the disaster these questions must be asked. Is this the most constructive way?”
We understand that out of the 159 million budget that the Civil Protection was to use for interventions, 11.6 were eventually used for soil defense. It’s correct?
“This is what appears on the cards. This is why I ask the president of the Bonaccini Region for clarity. The cards can also be misinterpreted but in my opinion someone has to answer and also tell us about the previous years that disappear”
Meaning what?
“The 2022-2024 regional land maintenance plan, 378 pages, contains everything except the report of what has been achieved in previous years”
After the transfer of responsibilities from Anas to local authorities, were those responsibilities absorbed by the new offices for territorial control?
“Many regions had passed these powers to the provinces but the provinces, as we know, thanks to a wonderful reforming intervention by the master of Italian reformers, that is Matteo Renzi, as known, were abolished, and therefore returned to the regions”
She is ironic…
“Absolutely no. The man who, in just a few years, goes from 42% to ridiculous percentages and who every time someone does something, he says ‘but my government had already done it here and there’ is an example for everyone. Among the things he should boast about is how he tackled the issue of the provinces that have been destroyed, so much so that today there are plans to rebuild them. This transfer of powers has been devastating. Before there were the provincial roadmen who at least carried out surveillance activities, the Anas roadmen who carried out surveillance and warned about areas at risk”
In general, having a political idea, more or less legitimate or interesting, does not mean knowing how to play politics… are you telling us this?
“Break through an open door with me. My old medieval history professor explained to me that in the 1500s the Po flooded 12 times, just as the Tiber and the Arno did. These are events that have been repeated many times in environmental and climatic history. Now we see errors in the cementing of the soil and construction on the riverbeds, lack of maintenance of the territory. There is a climatic variation, of course. But also the climatologist Franco Prodi, Romano’s brother, proposes a different point of view to read the relationship between climate change and the impact of human activities. Considering man responsible for climate change is scientifically unfounded, there is no evidence, also because our knowledge of the meteorological and climate system is truly limited to a short time. We have a very limited sequence of studies on climate change. So instead of focusing on ‘creed’ and bar discussions let’s focus on what has actually been done in an area that began as a swamp and has historically always been flooded. I look forward to your responses.”
Subscribe to the newsletter