STORM VAIA OR COVID-19 VENETO DOES NOT STOP

After the forced break due to the health emergency for Covid-19 , restoration work has resumed on the part of Veneto Agricoltura in the large Belluno area affected by the Tempesta Vaia .

In the Rocca Pietore construction site, the epicenter of the disaster, the team of forest workers of the regional agency is engaged in the realization of a series of hydraulic-forestry works necessary to protect a heavily affected area. In times of emergency for Coronavirus, the usual construction site equipment is obviously enriched also by the safeguards for workers' safety.

Also in Lorenzago di Cadore , Parco dei Sogni, the teams of workers of Veneto Agricoltura are realizing - using naturalistic engineering techniques - five distinct mixed works in wood and stone in order to consolidate a path that represents in the collective imagination the " Path of the Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI ° " . We remember, in fact, that the two Popes stayed several times in the Mirabello Castle in Lorenzago (belonging to the curia of Venice) on their summer holidays and often loved to walk right along the Parco dei Sogni and stop to meditate and pray in the suggestive glimpses of the route . Following the Tempesta Vaia, the Val de Pena stream and some of its secondary tributaries are overflowed causing significant damage to the route such as landslides, erosion, landslides, crashes and overlapping debris. With this restoration project, prepared by the Region, Veneto Agricoltura plans to reconsolidate the route by means of a series of works that will allow the pedestrian transit and the passage of the forestry means necessary for the cultivation care. At the same time, the Val de Pena stream will be made safe by restoring a large section of outflow and collecting finished crashes in the riverbed.

The forestry workers of Veneto Agricoltura have already completed the removal of over 500 cubic meters of debris and 200 cubic meters of timber from the Rudan stream in Vodo di Cadore . The works were characterized by great attention for the preparation of warning and safety measures for the risk of debris flows, particularly dangerous and frequent in this stream (whose name is already significant in itself: Ru dan) which descends from the slopes of the Monte Antelao.

In Val Visdende , one of the areas most affected by the Vaia storm, the force of the wind had left over 350 thousand cubic meters of spruce timber on the ground. A deep wound for one of the most beautiful valleys in the Alps. Today, while the work of recovering the crashes and making the territory safe continues, the forestry workers of Veneto Agricoltura are starting the replanting work, collecting the seedlings born in the marginal areas of the riverbed and planting them on the bare slopes.

Another important intervention carried out by the workers of the Regional Agency concerned the Val de Soccosta forest road in the Municipality of Auronzo di Cadore . The works, for a total amount of 40,000 euros, allowed the reopening of the path that runs alongside the stream of the same name, damaged by the flood events of autumn 2018. Important were also the interventions carried out for the safety of the stream with the construction from scratch or the restoration of longitudinal and transversal defense works. In this case too, the staff resolved the considerable difficulties, such as getting the large cyclopean boulders necessary for the execution of the works designed by the Veneto Region to the construction site. Since the small bridges would not have supported the weight of the trucks, the boulders were first deposited along the bank of the stream and then "ferried" one by one with an excavator beyond the riverbed and from there loaded onto another truck until at the construction site. A long and patient procedure that made possible the important intervention of arrangement of the area.

Everyone remembers that the flood events of the Vaia storm had also hit the city of Belluno hard. At the confluence of the Rio Paletta on the Piave River, the slope that runs along the above sports structures was dangerously collapsed, so much so that the Veneto Region, after a few months, had prepared a restoration project entrusted to Veneto Agriculture. The execution of the interventions, for a total amount of 50 thousand euros, consisted in the construction of a cliff supporting the bank, made with cyclopean boulders, 25 m long and 2.70 high and in five transversal thresholds on the watercourse in order to decrease the slope and erosive force of the waters. In these days the construction site is nearing completion : after having restored the embankment with about 500 cubic meters of material recovered on site, the agency workers are spreading a layer of vegetable earth, on which a sowing of a mixture will be carried out broadly of herbaceous species subsequently covered with jute mats, which will protect the slope until it becomes green again.