Floods? Prevention is better than reconstruction
Preventing bad weather and floods in time also means investing today so as not to spend much more tomorrow. It means saving lives, which is the main investment for a country. Federico Guiglia's notebook
Bad weather in the beautiful country is no longer a seasonal paradox, but a dramatic and consolidated reality that the institutions have a duty to face once and for all. "We are facing another earthquake like the one of 2012", denounced Stefano Bonaccini, president of Emilia-Romagna , the Region hit hardest in these hours by a truly universal flood that has devastated the territory and already caused 9 dead, missing, thousands evacuated and extensive damage. In just two weeks, the rain of seven months fell.
The Minister for Civil Protection, Nello Musumeci, in announcing the extension of the state of emergency that had already been adopted by the Council of Ministers, i.e. an increase in resources to support the population forced to abandon their homes because at the mercy of rivers and flooded streams, as many as 21 between Rimini and Bologna alone, now declares: "Within a year a national plan on instability, we must recover 80 years of arrears". Better late than never.
THE IMPORTANCE OF PREVENTION
But let's take the minister's words as a commitment made on behalf of the current government and all the previous ones, united by the inability to carry out what everyone from time to time had promised a minute after the tragedies, and never a minute before, ie a forward-looking strategy to protect citizens and territories from sudden and torrential rains and long periods of drought. Which are the two reverse sides of the same coin represented not only by the now full-blown climate change, but above all by the equally evident lack of a prevention policy.
An environmental prevention that goes beyond the always extraordinary feat of rescuers: in the face of every disaster they risk their lives to save that of others. A prevention that knows how to select the priorities of the government for Italy. And that it prevents what is necessarily happening instead, the closure of schools and sections of motorway, the blocking of trains and delays in high-speed trains, the suspension of the Imola Grand Prix and all that is necessary in these hours to guarantee safety of people. With the serious and still incalculable economic consequences for everyone.
Preventing bad weather in time also means investing today so as not to spend much more tomorrow. It means saving lives, which is the main investment for a large, albeit flooded, country.
(Published in L'Arena di Verona, Il Giornale di Vicenza and Bresciaoggi)
www.federicoguiglia.com
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/alluvioni-prevenzione/ on Fri, 19 May 2023 05:12:52 +0000.