There are controversies following the depositions given by the defendants in the trial on the Lentigione flood, which occurred on 12 December 2017. The engineer Mirella was the first to speak on Thursday in front of judge Giovanni Ghini and the public prosecutor Piera Cristina Giannusa. Vergnani, leading the Western Emilia direction of Aipo, called to respond to the accidental flood together with the engineer Massimo Valente, previously manager of the Western Emilia area and the surveyor Luca Zilli. Vergnani reeled off a series of problems: the lack of alert in Aipo by the Civil Protection and volunteers; the Arpae bulletins which underestimated the flood level forecasts; the convocation of the Ccs (Rescue Coordination Centre) by the prefect of Reggio Emilia later than in Parma.
In the courtroom there were representatives of the Lentigione Flood Committee and citizens (Edmondo Spaggiari, Carlo Benassi, Luca Bertolini and Lorenzo Bianchi Ballano). The reconstruction of the defendants in the courtroom was received with bitterness for the ‘confirmation’ of a circumstance: “There was no attention for the Reggio Emilia side and for Brescello, so much so that the Ccs – they note, quoting Vergnani’s words – was summoned for the first time only at 11 pm on December 11”.
Bianchi Ballano, a Civil Protection volunteer who testified at the last hearing, replied from a distance: “The volunteers should have been activated, not the other way around”. While Benassi polemically asks: “If the design of the embankment depends on the Basin Authority, Aipo has no finances except for mowing the grass on the embankments and not even personnel for surveillance, what does Aipo do?”. The engineer had said that the plans for the embankments “are made by Aipo on the basis of the Pai (Hydrogeological Plan) which must be updated by the Basin Authority, a step that was not done due to a lack of resources”. The mayor of Brescello Carlo Fiumicino (the Municipality is a civil party) was also present in court: “These disasters must never happen again. I will not stop reporting to the relevant bodies the urgent need to intervene to clean and maintain the bed of the Enza torrent”. The mayor breaks a lance in favor of the associative reality from which Vergnani said he had not received warnings before the flood: “I express full solidarity and support to the volunteers who carried out and carry out a truly precious and irreplaceable job”.
Alessandra Codeluppi
