Prato, the Bisenzio river overflows
Bad weather in Tuscany, controversy between the mayor of Prato and the governor Giani
Very dark days due to bad weather in Tuscany, where there are deaths, missing people and 200 displaced people and a situation of chaos due to flooding, closed roads and interrupted railway lines. The government has approved the national state of emergency for the territories of the provinces of Florence, Livorno, Pisa, Pistoia and Prato and has allocated five million euros for the first interventions. Mobile columns of firefighters, civil protection and Red Cross volunteers arrived in the north-west of Tuscany from all over Italy.
Storm Ciaran hit Italy with downpours and thunderstorms, in particular in Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia, which during the day spread to the central and southern Tyrrhenian regions, with flooding and disruption to road and rail traffic. The bad weather will not give respite over the weekend: for Saturday the Civil Protection has issued a red alert for eastern Veneto, orange for parts of Liguria, Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy and Veneto and yellow in 14 regions. In Prato schools will remain closed.
Bad weather, gloomy forecast for the weekend. Geologists: “94% of Italian municipalities at risk”
“The weather warning should have been red, not orange.” It is the outburst of the mayor of Prato, Matteo Biffoni, recorded by Corriere della Sera while he wanders through the streets of his city injured by Ciaran. “We had the yellow alert – he says – for the rain and the orange for the plumber. The problem is that the risk was very red”. The Tuscan governor Eugenio Giani replied as follows: “The type of alarm is decided by the technicians, and I have faith in them: if they gave that type of alarm, orange, it is because the weather forecast presented the orange alarm”.
The risks for the Italian territory are many, more than elsewhere. “Few data: two thirds of landslides in all of Europe occur in Italy. While 94% of municipalities have areas at risk”, Arcangelo Francesco Violo, president of the National Council of Geologists, tells Corriere della Sera. “Prevention interventions have no political return. And they are neglected. From 1998 to 2018, 5.6 billion euros were spent on prevention works and more than 20 to repair damage. From the post-war period to today, almost 200 have been spent billion which rises to 300 with those caused by earthquakes”, he adds.
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