A general census will begin in the next few months on the state of the bridges in the Romagna area of Faenza following last year’s flood. There are 118 – out of a total of 253 – the structures that will become the object of observation, according above all to three criteria: the danger (i.e. the degradation of the structures and materials), the vulnerability (i.e. the static scheme of the structures and the light’ which characterizes the features of the bridge) and the exposure, which coincides with the average daily traffic. It will be the judgment on these three parameters that will establish which works will mainly be investigated.
Following direct negotiation, the census was entrusted to the company 4 Emme Service Spa, with headquarters in Bolzano and various offices scattered throughout the centre-north and the islands. “The activity – we read in the resolution – must be carried out through analysis of the current state of conservation of each work and its actual state of deterioration, for the purpose of planning the necessary maintenance interventions and assigning the criteria to establish the priorities of the interventions to be carried out, on a single work or between different works, and for a correct economic estimate of the interventions themselves. The activities must be carried out in such a way as to determine a correct picture of the deterioration of the work, evaluating the individual defects of each structural element -. shoulders, piers, deck, piers, joints, arches, crosspieces – and accessory elements, such as flooring, parapets and guardrails, curbs, water conveyance, lighting poles, underground utilities”.
The flood was the greatest test that the bridges in the Romagna area of Faenza had to endure during the post-war period: some emerged so badly damaged that they were now destined for demolition – this is the case of the Ponte delle Grazie – others, in particular in territory of Riolo Terme, saw technicians working to free it from the dams that had formed underneath the structure, while there were those who were literally swept away, as in the case of the bridge upstream in via Ceparano, literally devoured by waters of the Marzeno.
Filippo Donati
