Italy Looks to Trentino Model for Fire and Volunteer Civil Protection Integration
Integration between Fire Brigades and volunteers? It is the only way forward to improve and strengthen the civil protection system in the territory. Especially in our province, which must deal with numerous situations of hydrogeological instability.
In short, a replication of the existing protection system in Trentino-Alto Adige, where almost every municipality can count on its own group of volunteer firefighters. From Sirmione, where three years ago the first inter-municipal civil protection experience was born in Italy, this message is being conveyed by the top leaders of the territorial defense bodies.
Including associations such as the Volunteers of Garda, the Red Cross, and many others, gathered at a national conference on the theme «Local Authority Towards an Integrated Security System», promoted by the Inter-Municipal Service «Garda Emergency» with the sponsorship of the Presidency of the Council, the ANCI, and the Municipality of Sirmione. It seems to be light years away from when competitions, envies, and jealousies among the National Fire Corps and volunteers were not uncommon.
Tensions and Unity in the Rescue System
These tensions between rescue organizations appear to have been buried. However, as Patrizia Cologgi (coordinator of the volunteer service within the Department of Civil Protection) observed in her speech, «Certain reticence and misunderstandings must be overcome by the public administration; today, volunteering must coexist with the public system and take on the characteristics of civil protection. The still unresolved issues are cultural…»
At the Palazzo dei Congressi, where the continued seminar took place, in the afternoon, with a round table among emergency and rescue field technicians, many speakers took the floor, one after the other. Cino Anelli, president of the Garda Inter-Municipal Management Committee (currently comprising ten Municipalities, the latest being Montichiari), recalled «the excellent work carried out in these first three years by the service personnel repeatedly involved in extraregional floods and the monsoons that hit our areas».
Again, Anelli pointed out that «our model is mixed, i.e., integrated between Fire Brigades and volunteer associations, the first example in Italy». A «marriage» which, according to Silvia Bernardini, representing ANCI, not only must be consolidated but «should be exported elsewhere as proof that it is possible, if not essential, for Municipalities to unite their efforts to achieve the goal of defending the environment and citizens».
Sirmione, then? «I can only express praise for this initiative — said Giancarlo Di Vincenzo, delivering the greetings of the Prefect of Brescia, Anna Maria Cancellieri — the collaboration between public institutions and volunteers is certainly significant: our province has areas at hydrogeological risk, so an increased civil protection network is definitely useful».
Among those present at the conference were the mayors of Sirmione and some Garda Municipalities, as well as the Brescia Provincial Fire Chief, Luigi Biscardi, Gino Gronchi, national president of the Voluntary Firefighters Association, and Fabrizio Cola, responsible for relations with local autonomies of the Civil Protection Department. All in agreement, therefore, on the need to lay the foundations for a closer integration among the various rescue and civil protection segments currently existing in Italy, and to seek that understanding, widely desired, which should revolutionize, by emulating the Trentino model (without necessarily referring to the usual European country), the way rescue is conceived in Italy.
