“The citizens of Lentigione who were shocked by the flood have in recent days helped the residents of Cadelbosco who were flooded due to broken banks, bringing them arms, boots and spades. Seven years later the problems are the same: the Lentigione disaster did not help to nothing.” This is how the lawyer Domizia Badodi began, representing the Committee of flood victims of Lentigione and 165 of the 180 citizens who were civil parties: “There are those who have lived through a war”.
Before Judge Giovanni Ghini, he distanced himself from the Prosecutor’s Office, arguing that “there is the responsibility of the defendants at a technical, regulatory, role and information level which would have imposed very different conduct”. For Badodi, however, it is the study of the engineer Paolo Bizzarri, “that is the most correct, with or without a soft cord”: “He had the data available that Marco Mancini and Mignosa (the other consultants of the prosecutor, ed.) did not have and also documents from third parties: in optimal conditions of the boxes, there would have been no overlap, due maintenance and supervision were lacking”.
He also cited testimony that “the flood was significant, but not exceptional.” When and if to put sandbags? He quoted engineer Leonardo Schippa, technical consultant appointed by Aipo’s defence: “He said that if the interventions are implemented earlier the floods will be contained”. And he also names the accused Mirella Vergnani who declared: “If there had been any need we would have found the bags”.
Badodi, who clarified that “the subjects brought to trial are the correct ones”, however requested the transmission of the documents to the Prosecutor’s Office for perjury against Giacomo Di Matteo, then extraordinary commissioner based in the municipality of Brescello: “I am referring to the information that Di Matteo would have received from Volmer Bonini, coordinator of the Civil Protection volunteers, present at the 11pm Ccs in the prefecture in Reggio; and the existence of an adequate embankment to allow the flow of the flood – underlines Badodi – but Bonini denied both that the embankment franc had been discussed at the Ccs, and that he had reported this circumstance to Di Matteo, and that a value of the 80 centimeters franc had emerged at the Cc as said by Di Matteo”.
Then “the declared non-existence in the municipal civil protection plan of a specific flood risk precision on the Enza is denied: the Municipality’s civil lawyer filed it”. He then said that Aipo “did not act on the embankments alongside the volunteers as he should have done. Luca Zilli confessed that he was not present on the embankment but was warned on the telephone by Mirella Vergnani, despite what the prefect ordered”.
On the soft rope, “it was known. Vergnani said that he had no elements to say that there were critical issues in Lentigione, but here there are infinite soft ropes”.
He praised the mayor of Sorbolo (Pr) Nicola Cesari: “It seems that he and the defendants had different nights. He alerted the volunteers, made the courageous choice not to bag the Sorbolo bridge on his side and gave the order to evacuate”.
Badodi asked for millions in compensation for the citizens. Also present were civil lawyers Gianluca Tirelli, Cecilia Turazza and Alessandro Nizzoli. The lawyer Salvatore Tesoriero requested 7 million for the Municipality of Brescello as a civil party, of which 3.2 million in provisional payments linked to certain damages. And he asked the judge to commission a technical assessment of the spring rope, if it were to be detected and subject to monitoring. In addition to the conviction of the defendants and joint compensation with Aipo.
Finally the arguments of the defenders. The lawyer Vittorio Melandri for the Aipo civil manager attributed some responsibilities to the Region: “Aipo does not have planning functions for the hydraulic works, but the Region does. The basin Authority gave programmatic guidelines not followed by the Region”. And then: “Aipo has no expertise on sediment management, while on vegetation the interventions are not extemporaneous but require planning by the Region which has not existed”. The lawyers Giulio Garuti for Massimo Valente, Amerigo Ghirardi for Luca Zilli and Paolo Trombetti for Mirella Vergnani asked for acquittal “because the fact does not exist”, arguing among other things that even if the coffers had been in perfect condition the flooding it would not have been avoidable.
