The emergency response worked, but the earthquake that struck central Italy reopens the question of making buildings safe. What is Casa Italia, the twenty-year programme the government is proposing.
The "emergency response machine" worked very well. As for reconstruction, the government has already allocated 50 million euros, promising that within a month none of the approximately 3,500 displaced people will still be sleeping in tents. But almost a week after the earthquake that, seven years after L'Aquila, struck central Italy once again, destroying four municipalities across Lazio, Umbria and Marche (Amatrice and Accumoli in the province of Rieti, Arquata and Pescara del Tronto in the province of Ascoli Piceno) and claiming 292 lives, the emergency is beginning to give way to the fundamental question of prevention — an area in which Italy has once again found itself dramatically behind. "This is not the moment for controversy," Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had replied at a press conference in Rieti to a journalist who asked precisely about the implementation of anti-seismic plans. Now, however, an ambitious plan has arrived, called Casa Italia, which aims to make the entire national territory safe.
Nothing official yet, as the plan will be presented to local authorities, mayors and experts in the coming days, and the council of ministers convened urgently after the earthquake of 24 August dealt only with the emergency — but Renzi has already outlined his thinking: a twenty-year plan for which architect and senator for life Renzo Piano was also consulted, based on incentives and tax reductions for building adaptation works, worth two billion euros a year. But one that also contains measures that are more incisive (and perhaps better communicated) than the ecobonus — the 65 per cent tax deduction on anti-seismic works that was already included in last year's stability law.
Casa Italia, in the government's intentions, should in fact go well beyond incentives for making private buildings safe, and should also encompass a number of works already under way: those for the modernisation of schools. The school in Amatrice has been placed under judicial seizure by the Public Prosecutor's office: it had been declared earthquake-proof, yet it collapsed along with the rest of the town. Schools will be entrusted to a dedicated technical unit, with a total investment of four billion euros; works on hydrogeological instability, for which projects worth 1.3 billion euros are already in place; works on peripheral urban areas, which Renzo Piano is already working on, with nearly one billion euros in funding. There will also be 500,000 euros earmarked for the habitability of 25,000 public housing units, and a further two billion to make roads and railways safe, naturally involving Anas and Ferrovie dello Stato.
In total, then, we are talking about a plan worth nearly 50 billion euros, though much of this spread over a twenty-year period. Because, as Renzi says, "what has been missing in the past is the building of a national project based on prevention: not only reacting, not only rebuilding, but preventing. A decisive change of mindset is therefore needed. None of us will be able to stop nature, but why not change our mindset and work — all together — on a project that keeps our family and our home safer?" In the meantime, Undersecretary Claudio De Vincenti has been summoned to parliament for Thursday 1 September: it will be the first opportunity to discuss the country's future publicly.