467. Guido Bertolaso: A Man for all Seasons

Yes, that’s how Guido Bertolaso can well be described:  a man for all seasons because during the various disasters that has hit Italy, whether it was a left-wing, or right-wing government in power, it mattered not, for Guido Bertolaso ​​was always present.

From rubble to ...

Under the Prodi Government he was head of Civil Protection in 1996, then in 2001. In 2006 and 2008 he was Extraordinary Commissioner for the waste emergency in Campania- Naples area.

Holding the keys to …

the village that was built with the funds
raised by the Red Cross and the Trento Region

In 2009 we find him Extraordinary Commissioner for the emergency in the management of the after-earthquake in Abruzzo (Aquila) where under Berlusconi's government he handed over to 2,500 people new homes built within five months of the earthquake. It certainly was an act in record time considering that it takes years and years for anyone whose house has been destroyed by earthquake to have a new home. And sometimes, this never happens because as we have seen, people damaged from other earthquakes, are still in containers.

But then, like all great men who are worth one’s salt, there is always someone who wants to do them in. Hence, he was later charged and for years was tried for manslaughter, bribery corruption, and even sexual harassment or something of that kind.

Finally, in 2018 this great doctor and servant of the state was acquitted of everything because the fact does not exist. As the Rome Tribunal ruled on the allegations against the former head of Civil Protection, "The accusations didn’t have a leg to stand on."

"Many will have to apologize..." Renato Brunetta, head of the Forza Italia group in the Chamber of Deputies, wrote on Twitter.

But let's return to the present and this new disaster that has hit Italy - the Coronavirus, alias the COVID 19. The thing that most of all we don't need at the moment is to make a fuss and be polemic but here in the North you get infected like flies, and you die without even noticing. Unfortunately, down in Rome they don't hear us because they have their own problems to cope with, for instance, the hospital Spallanzani, the centre for COVID 19 patients.

In Lombardy everything is lacking; hospitals, staff, respiratory machines, disinfectants, masks... Speaking of masks, Radio Rai 3 wakes me up yesterday morning with the news that the powers that be sent masks made with toilet paper to the North... Surely, it’s a joke, I thought to myself. Unfortunately, it was all true, a whining minister said that the real masks were blocked at the customs in Turkey. Ah, I thought, here they are now using even mask to blackmail us - poor Italy!

Meanwhile, here in the North you die like flies.

It is no wonder that the Governor of Lombardy, Attillio Fontana decided to roll up his sleeves and get busy with a "Do it yourself," strategy. Fontana’s team began transforming the buildings of the EXPO into hospitals for COVID 19 patients only... It therefore became inevitable that they would entrust themselves into the hands of our Guido Bertolaso for such feats. He enters on tiptoe, but everyone knows that this is the only chance the North has to be able to pull out of this inconceivable and abrupt curse.

So, WELCOME GUIDO BERTOLASO!

Aquila 2009: Where there are houses, there are schools. In this school we see Guido Bertolaso, in charge of the construction here in Aquila, welcome the children in their new school. Yes, because this nursery school has been constructed from a plan which was a part of a degree thesis by Giulia Carnevale whose body was found under the debris.