The attention remains at maximum levels as new waves of bad weather are forecasted. The Decentralized Functional Center of ARPAV, the Regional Agency for Environmental Protection and Prevention of Veneto, has issued a new critical alert valid until 8:00 p.m. today.
Regarding the Lower Brenta-Bacchiglione alert zones, which concern the city of Vicenza, hydraulic criticality remains red, and hydrogeological criticality is orange. The Upper Brenta-Bacchiglione-Alpone area, which affects the Alto Vicentino, instead registers a yellow level concerning hydraulic criticality and orange for hydrogeological criticality. According to ARPAV, in alert areas, landslides may occur in foothill and hilly areas. In hydrogeological alert zones, probable issues include overwhelmed drainage systems and flooding of basements or underpasses; rising levels of secondary hydrographic networks and possible flooding of adjacent areas.
"We remain on alert," says Giacomo Possamai, mayor of Vicenza. "The forecasts for the next few hours, at the moment, do not cause us concern. In the last three days, from February 26 to 28, about 160 millimeters of rain fell in Vicenza. During these three days, there was a particularly acute period between the early hours of February 27 and 5-6 a.m. on the 28 when there were 138 millimeters of rain (in just over 30 hours, one day). It's quite impressive. It rained so much in the plains, the real atypical element of this emergency, that the Retrone river was loaded this way. And, as experts told us, this is also the reason, why the predictive model that told us that, all in all, things should be manageable, was wrong and we realized overnight that the situation was much more serious than expected. This is because in the five to six hours between the night of the 27 and the early hours of the 28, the ones leading up to dawn, 38 millimeters fell, which means 7 millimeters per hour, on a basin that was already in great difficulty.”
To put it into perspective, such a daily amount in Vicenza hadn't been measured since May 16, 2013, with 116 millimeters. “On that occasion,” continues Possamai, “the Bacchiglione River had an exceptional flood at 5 meters and 98 at the Ponte degli Angeli, and the Retrone reached 3 meters and 60.”
“One last thing, which seems interesting to me, is the total rainfall for the month of February. Since the data for Vicenza has been available, since 1919, there has never been such a rainy February with about 300 millimeters of rain. The aspect that should make us question more,” concludes Possamai, “is that the precedents are not from a hundred years ago but are both observable in the last ten years: in 2014 with 277 and in 2016 with 271.".