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Bad weather – Viterbo – Mayor Arena after the whirlwind that hit the city and the northern part of the municipality – The story of a long day – PHOTOS AND VIDEO
by Stefania Moretti
Viterbo – “We will ask about the state of calamity. We still do not have precise information on the scope, but we are talking about tens of millions of euros in damages ”. Words from the mayor Giovanni Arena, who spent the afternoon in the devastated Viterbo countryside.
Yesterday’s whirlwind was the apocalypse in a few minutes: age-old pines and olive trees uprooted, light poles pulled down, tiles ripped from roofs, the roofs of farm sheds blown up like sheets of paper.
“The wind has also eradicated many solar panels. Only that damage there will amount to a million euros, at least -explains the mayor-. Today I will try to understand if the request for a state of calamity can be made in advance or if the precise quantification of the damages is needed ”.
Yesterday morning the bad weather roared inadvertently to attack, or so it seemed; Until lunchtime, the police switchboards had not yet been broken into. The disaster came around 1:30 p.m. It mainly affected the northern area of Viterbo, between Teverina and Verentana.
“We had the most serious problems on Rinaldone Street – says the mayor -. Five families temporarily away from home, it will probably be a matter of a few days, plus a couple of farms, Bevilacqua and Nardi, badly damaged, but the owners have apartments in Viterbo. The municipality has coordinated with the Prefecture, we have made available the homes used by social services for emergencies. We would have also paid for hotel rooms, but it didn’t help: we have no requests for alternative accommodation, everyone has organized with relatives.
The organizing machine was immediately in motion. “We activated immediately, through the operating room, to look for possible accommodations for those who might need it – says the local police commander Mauro Vinciotti, at the end of a long day -. The houses on Rinaldone Street are useless, it will be a question of securing them, the wind has caused serious damage, especially on the roofs ”. Further checks will be carried out in the coming days to accurately assess the extent of the damage.
The police and the carabinieri participated in dozens of interventions, along with the firefighters. I work tirelessly to remove trees, branches and debris that have ended up in the street. The wind was so violent that it even knocked over an agricultural trailer and an imposing pylon: this is the reason for the blackout that, yesterday, at lunchtime, left the town of Viterbo without light and without light for about an hour.
The devastation in the images collected by the Tusciaweb reporters and the newspaper’s readers. “Scenes of war,” some have written. Some kind of earthquake. “An event clearly greater than a whirlwind,” described a local resident. And the death toll is only two people in the ER just because so many were not at home.
Via Garbini and via della Palazzina transformed into lakes. Trees felled in the country and in the city.
The first regional civil protection meteorological alert, issued on Saturday, August 30 and the following 18-24 hours, was followed by another today for the 31st and until the following 18 hours. Today will be another day of hail, rain, wind and thunderstorms.
Stefania moretti
August 31, 2020
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