“A year ago the world came down. For some, in reality, the world had already come crashing down at the beginning of the month. But the dimension and intensity of what began to manifest itself on May 16, 2023 will long remain imprinted in the memories of those who found water at home, those who had to move away from it and those who lost it forever. And the same goes for things that went under, from cars to appliances to memories of a lifetime, for properties connected to work, for community centers, etc., etc. And for lives, of course: 17 people and a very high number of domestic and wild animals died. The environment, roads, land, bridges were also devastated…
There is no doubt that the triggering cause was a climatic cause. A coincidence of events that blew up the estate upstream and downstream of small and large waterways. An increasingly frequent exceptionality due to climate change caused by greenhouse gases. Is it a natural fact? No. The choice to continue burning and dispersing fossil fuels into the atmosphere as if there were no tomorrow is the result of precise human choices. Together with intensive farming, they are the main source of climate-altering gases. And it is a choice made by the rulers of almost all of the West and beyond. In Italy the co-responsibility of the centre-right and centre-left is clear.
However, there were also specific reasons that caused a critical situation to turn into a disaster. No. Not the otters that de Pascale ridiculously tried to divert attention from. The Mayor then declared that: “while the issue of climate change is a central issue with respect to flooding, the issue of land consumption has little to do with it.” No, it has a lot to do with it. Today what administrators and technicians admitted years ago is denied. If the lands from which canals and rivers collect water are increasingly waterproofed, it is more problematic to manage floods because the influx is more intense and copious. At the time of the previous memorable flood, that of 8 and 9 October 1996, the then Mayor Pierpaolo D’Attorre knew well the value of self-criticism: «Water at home is also the result of wild use of the territory. The damage was most serious in Italy and Emilia-Romagna, where municipalities did not invest in serious sewage systems or ignored active policies against subsidence. From here, from what we have done and learned in recent days, we must start to restore houses and fields to normality, so that the rains, even extraordinary ones, like those of this October, no longer turn into cataclysms». Incidentally, subsidence is mainly caused by the extraction of that methane gas which in turn is the main cause of the rise in temperatures. And the Ravenna PD is among the most important supporters of extractivist capitalism.
The other fundamental factor is that of protecting the territory, from maintenance to adjustments to safeguarding the hilly environment. In 2001, the Municipality of Ravenna tried to reassure those who still had in mind the flood events of five years earlier: «Many interventions have already been carried out and others are currently underway by the relevant bodies to prevent flood damage. In recent years the municipal administration has worked particularly hard to protect our territory from flood phenomena. The Region has allocated over 90 billion for the construction of works and, among these, the protection of the major drainage channels (the Lama, the Fosso Ghiaia, the Dismano, the Canala), the Bevano river, the areas of Castiglione and Mezzano, of the Montone and Reno rivers”.
The center-left that has administered Ravenna from those days to today without interruption cannot avoid responsibility for both what was done and what was not done until May 16, 2023. The reassurances that the Province gave liberally in 2005 turned out to be just words. Yet he guaranteed that he had given «start, starting from emergency situations, of a series of structural programs to make the system safe, partly already implemented but which will have to be progressively implemented according to a new logic of active prevention, aimed at “minimizing” the hydraulic risk».
Nothing to be done for this center-left from Ravenna even after May 16, 2023. And it makes you angry to listen to Councilor Baroncini who, in last Tuesday’s City Council, responds in a question time on the flood: «There hasn’t been a day since last May where we haven’t worked on the topic“. In fact: there has not been a day in which the new cement works, approved by this Council, have stopped both in areas already flooded and in those at risk. With all due respect to that “zero land consumption”, which often comes out of the mouths of the members of the majority.
Like Ravenna in the Municipality we have reiterated in vain throughout the past year the pressing request to block all new authorizations implying an increase in land consumption. In vain because no disaster will ever move them from their liberal model of squeezing the territory like it was a lemon. Just as the events of 1996 were not enough to change the paradigm, neither were those of last year. The only thing that can move them is losing the Administration of this Municipality. Let’s make it happen soon. Our survival is at stake.
Ravenna in Comune invites you to participate in the regional march for the anniversary of the flood which tomorrow, 17 May, will reach the Palazzo della Regione starting from Piazza dell’Unità, in Bologna, at 5.30pm.”
Ravenna in the Municipality
