Torri Appoints Young Leader for New Civil Protection Team
Only the officially signed resolution by the mayor of Torri, Alberto Vedovelli, is missing, but the decisions are ormai made: Marcello Rizzi is the new head of the municipal Civil Protection. The announcement is made by the same mayor himself: “In the coming days, the administrative officer Domenico Tenca will issue the appropriate resolution, and it will be official. However, in practice, the new municipal Civil Protection is already fully active.”
The new manager and his responsibilities
For Marcello Rizzi, a very young former minority city councilor in the last legislative session, who then dissociated himself and remained in opposition as an independent, and a former councilor of the Montana del Baldo, it is a “significant” role, as he himself comments, but one that does not “scare” him. Indeed, in recent years, he has actively collaborated within the Montana del Baldo to make the supra-municipal civil protection project operational, covering the entire Garda-Baldo area.
To start, the thirty-two-year-old has already split the Torri Civil Protection into two sections, appointing two technical coordinators. “Dino Sasso,” explains Rizzi, “will handle maritime interventions. He is a diving instructor and has seven young people ready to intervene.”
Regarding land-based interventions, which are numerically the most important, Rizzi has reactivated Ivano Salaorni, a “familiar face” in the field of civil protection, as he previously managed the now-defunct Civil Protection group of the Croce Bianca.
However, the new civil protection head prefers to distance himself from the past. “Before these two appointments,” explains Marcello Rizzi, “we held joint meetings with the mayor and the two technical coordinators of their respective operational units, to clarify immediately the tasks to be performed and the way they should be carried out. Only in this way can we face our responsibilities without disputes or operational doubts.”
The previous situation and current organization
The reference is, of course, to the disorganized state that the civil protection team operated in within the Croce Bianca, acting on behalf of the Comune di Torri, before the town established its own group. Currently, there are twenty-six members registered with the Volunteer Civil Protection Group, about ten of whom are always available and capable of responding to emergencies.
“To be truly operational,” Rizzi concludes, “the essential condition is that the Municipality provides us with a vehicle, even used, for intervention. A car or a four-wheel drive, for example, is needed to reach inaccessible areas and forests. Without this, we cannot start. Additionally, all the rest of the equipment should gradually arrive, as very little remains from the previous civil protection. For instance, the scuba diving team can currently only operate with their personal gear, which is objectively unacceptable from the volunteers.”
The Group is already registered in the regional civil protection lists, and most volunteers, who were already under Salaorni’s command, have often demonstrated their competence in various wildfire suppression operations, which are the most requested in the lake and foothill areas during the summer.
Assurances from the mayor concerning the purchase of the vehicle requested by the Civil Protection have been received. Rizzi concludes, “It will be closely linked to the one in Malcesine, directed by Gianfranco Prandini, and to the supra-municipal Montana del Baldo.”
The official debut for the new Torri Group is scheduled for today and tomorrow at the eighth Baldese Ecological Day. The event is organized by the Montana del Baldo, in collaboration with various entities and associations, aiming to clean up the degraded areas and other sites in Brenzone, Costermano, San Zeno, and Torri that require this kind of intervention.
Gerardo Musuraca