I hate indifference and I understand how human it is to try to keep bad thoughts out of your head. However, the image of the nine – let’s say nine – citizens of Pozzuoli who showed up for the evacuation test yesterday morning are astounding. 200 had booked, already very few of them and 191 never arrived. According to the Municipality, it would have been difficult to reach 30 (where?). You will understand.
For weeks now, all of Italy – including us at La Ragione – it rightly goes after the alarms, the shocks, the more than understandable fears. We have written and reported on the nights spent away from home by many citizens of the Phlegraean area and of Pozzuoli in particular.
We would never dare to trivialize people’s fears and in general the more than legitimate reactions and the writer experienced firsthand the devastating earthquake of November 23, 1980. However, how can we not ask ourselves a simple question: when will the average Italian citizen think (or rather, will he understand) of having to make an active contribution, of having to do one’s part for the safety of oneself, of the family and of the entire community? When we emerge from the intellectual short circuit, for which the State is always at fault – whatever happens – and we are always at credit. Whatever you do or, as in this case, don’t do?!
Evacuation drills are (would be) a damn serious thing and instead in the collective imagination they are nothing more than a waste of time, a nuisance imposed by the authorities to clear their conscience and get in line with the law. In case…
Assuming that such considerations have a basis, we simply cannot understand how our indifferent or directly arrogant attitude legitimizes it.
There is something terribly para-Soviet in all this: in the times of the USSR, people pretended to work and the State pretended to pay. Here, the State prepares plans that no one knows in detail, much less anyone has bothered to pass on to every single interested person, if necessary forcing them to do their part.
Many citizens of the areas at risk, once the fear of the earthquake has passed, are beyond the stage of “pretending”. They care little or nothing about it, erecting a monument to mistrust and disorganization
Of Fulvio Giuliani
 at the evacuation test){kind=link}