Flood-ravaged Italian region may experience more violent and frequent storms

The floods that swept northern Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region this month, killing 15 people, leaving thousands homeless and bringing transport and businesses to a halt, were not a one-time event, experts warn, who predict more similar, frequent and fierce storms are coming.

“The question to be asked,” Italian civil protection minister Nello Musumeci told an Italian newspaper, “is not whether a catastrophic event” like the deadly flood will happen again, “but when and where it will happen. “

The causes of flooding are complex, including land development and soil conditions. But many experts in Italy, including Barbara Lastoria, a hydraulic engineer, have linked the two devastating storms that occurred over two weeks to climate change.

The amount of water that fell — about 19.6 inches of rain in 15 days, more than half the region’s average annual rainfall — was extraordinary, experts say, compounded by a months-long drought that had left the terrain struggling to absorb all that rain. to absorb . It swelled nearly two dozen rivers, pouring billions of gallons of water into the streets and countless acres of farmland.

The storms found fertile ground for disasters due to both natural and man-made events, including questionable decisions and decades of neglect of some infrastructure.

“The problem has certainly been underestimated,” said Armando Brath, the president of the Italian Association of Hydrotechnics. “Unfortunately, in Italy we are not the champions of prevention.”

Some say the solution will require political will, billions of euros and a population well aware that their future may be in jeopardy.

About 70 percent of Emilia-Romagna was already at risk of flooding — “a well-known fact,” said Francesco Violo, the president of the National Council of Geologists. And of the 80,000 landslides mapped there, several hundred were reactivated by the recent storms, he added.

The flooded area is a low-lying floodplain for the Po River. And the widespread opinion among geologists and hydraulic engineers is that the urbanization of the region in recent decades not only reduced the space for water to flow, but also contributed to the sinking of vast areas where water was extracted to keep foundations dry.

Rivers were channeled, narrowed, diverted and buried for generations. River beds and banks are not well maintained; vegetation and animal burrows have weakened levees. Many canals, waterways and dams built over the decades – centuries even – around calm waters flowing down from the Apennines have been partially neglected.

“There have been structures built over many years to collect water, and even if many are still functioning, some others need to be refurbished in terms of retrofit and maintenance so that they can be used again in an optimal configuration,” said Ms Lastoria, which cooperates with the Italian National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research.

In response to the floods, the Italian government set aside two billion euros ($2.15 billion) for the flood-stricken area on Tuesday, but Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said the full damage had yet to be assessed and more money would go to reconstruction .

Experts say reconstruction should go hand in hand with preventive measures to at least mitigate the effects of future storms.

“Prevention, maintenance and protection pay off,” said Carlo Carraro, emeritus president and professor of environmental economics at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

But Italy is one of the few countries that has not adopted a European Commission directive, the National Adaptation Plan, that requires all European Union member states to implement policies to reduce their vulnerability to climate change.

On Wednesday, Mr Musumeci, the minister of civil protection, told a Senate briefing that the plan would be released at the end of this year or early next year, “updated with data processed between 2016 and 2020”. He said the plan “hadn’t made any significant progress in years,” but that it would now be “major acceleration.”

Studies have shown that every euro invested in these policies equates to five or six euros of damage avoided, Mr Carraro said.

“Extreme events have always happened, but because of climate change they are becoming more common” and more expensive, he said.

Italy has spent €75 billion over the past 40 years on damage caused by extreme weather events, according to an estimate by the European Environment Agency. “It is an average value that hides an exponential trend, however,” said Mr Carraro.

There are many departments, regional officers, and municipal officials responsible for risk assessment and disaster countermeasure planning. But they are fragmented, said Mr. Violo of the Geologists’ Council.

“Often they don’t work together to coordinate necessary interventions,” he said. “It would be important to create a central office that can guarantee a long-term vision, over the years, because if regular plans are not kept, emergencies happen.”

Centuries ago, the country began to build artificial barriers and dams in many mountainous areas, which make up about 70 percent of Italy’s territory, but maintenance was gradually stopped. The solution to flooding on lower plains starts there, says Mauro Agnoletti, the UNESCO chair of agricultural heritage at the University of Florence. Maintenance needs to be increased, he said, “especially in areas upstream from cities.”

Italians generally don’t consider that their livelihoods, or their lives, could be endangered by natural disasters — at least not until disaster strikes, experts say.

That indifference puts risk assessment and risk prevention “off the political agenda,” said Erasmo D’Angelis, the former head of Safe Italy, a government organization that evaluated such risks and allocated funds to offset them.

“A major national public works project must start immediately to ensure the safety of millions of citizens,” he said, “not to mention a vast industrial and cultural heritage.”

To meet the challenges of climate change, some experts have proposed ending land use and redeveloping or reclaiming abandoned, polluted or degraded areas. Where new construction is deemed unavoidable, they say, existing hydraulic conditions must be taken into account and ensured that they will be maintained after completion.

“Make sure all planning takes climate change into account,” says Ilaria Falconi of the Italian Society of Environmental Geology.

Some have also suggested building reservoirs along rivers, but that may meet with political opposition. Mr D’Angelis noted that building reservoirs to contain flooding of Milan’s Seveso River led to “hard battles” with mayors and lasted for years.

Others say Italy already has many structures that could be revived to protect millions.

“There are already dams in Italy in the best places to build them – the problem is to restore them so that they can work optimally,” said Ms Lastoria.

She suggested broader solutions, such as more sustainable agriculture, rethinking how “how we occupy the territory, to give water some space back” and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“There is no quick, easy solution, no magic wand – that’s why you have to plan,” Ms Lastoria said. “Otherwise we risk reaching a point of no return.”