The President of the Piedmont Region Alberto Cirio he signed the request for a state of emergency addressed to the President of the Council Giorgia Meloni, to the Minister of Civil Protection Nello Musumeci and to the head of the Civil Protection Department Fabrizio Curcio, following the violent rainfall that hit the provinces of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, Turin and Vercelli last weekend.
In particular, the Anzasca Valley and the Divedro Valley in VCO, the upper Valsesia, the upper Valsusa, the Lanzo, Orco and Soana Valleys and the Canavese were involved.
An initial estimate of the interventions needed for the urgent needs and for the immediate restoration of the damage caused by the disturbance amounts to approximately 25 million eurosbased on the inspections carried out by technicians from the Regional Public Works Department and the Civil Protection teams. These inspections will continue in the coming days to define the reconstruction and risk reduction interventions that will need to be carried out. At the moment, in fact, it is necessary to wait for the river levels to return to be able to assess the erosion of the slopes and banks and have a complete picture of the situation.
“I would like to thank – declared President Cirio – those who have been working for days to support the areas hit by the rains and to allow the safety of roads and rivers to be restored. We sent the government a request for a state of emergency very quickly in order to immediately have resources for the extremely urgent works to be made available to the Municipalities. We were hit by a very violent phenomenon, which fortunately did not cause any victims and which we managed to contain thanks to the professionalism of our teams and also thanks to the safety works carried out in recent years. Once again, the Civil Protection of Piedmont has confirmed itself as the best in Italy,
faced with such violent and concentrated meteorological events and with the characteristic of being difficult to predict. The Civil Protection machine worked very well and brought the elderly, young people and children to safety and security”.
“The 200 millimetres of rain that fell in just a few hours, even more so considering the mountainous territory involved, constitute a true exception – highlights the Councillor for Civil Protection Marco Gabusi – Thanks to mayors, firefighters and the Civil Protection system, in a few hours the people who were at risk of being isolated were made safe and a situation of liveability was restored in the territories. We are alongside the Municipalities for the reconstruction phase that will also involve the recognition of a state of emergency”.
The Mountain Councillor Marco Gallo is ready to organize a meeting with the mountain unions Valli Orco and Soana, Valli di Lanzo and Valli dell’Ossola to take stock of the wounded mountain, studying possible interventions that go beyond those related to the request for a state of emergency: “Climate change is one of the most complex challenges to face, especially in a region with an orography such as that of Piedmont, which often accentuates the phenomena, making the hydrogeological stability of the entire system more fragile. For this reason, I believe it is important to team up to create synergies that strengthen the mountain territory”.
