Calling them “catastrophes” must sound really bad, so for some time now the language of insurance and bureaucracy has renamed floods, landslides, earthquakes and similar misfortunes “catastrophic events”. Mind you: “catastrophic”, not “catastrophic” as the correct Italian language would suggest. We often resort to neologisms when we are annoyed by calling things by their real name or to express (but often feign) delicacy for those identified by that term deemed too direct. As if for a flood victim it were sweeter to know they were hit by a “catastrophic event” rather than, precisely, by a “catatrophy” or a “catastrophic event”.

A mandatory expense

The term, in this case, was probably coined not so much for linguistic tact, but by those who potentially find themselves having to pay millions, or hundreds of millions of euros because of the catastrophe (i.e. the State and insurance companies), without having to write down in black and white on thousands of documents that, yes, the event referred to was indeed a catastrophe. We will have to become familiar with the term “catastrophic event” if, as it seems, after companies, private homes will also be required to have insurance for environmental disasters. Politics is not yet in agreement on the point, but let’s make some projections forward, as if the obligation already existed.

Since it is a mandatory expense on the house, be it a studio flat or a castle, it would be in fact a new tax on housing, or rather the re-edition of the usual tax that over time we have seen put and removed several times on the first house, while for the second house it would be an additional tax. And probably more expensive than the previous ones. It goes without saying that a tax is collected by the State and the insurance premium by a private entity. In this way the State relieves itself of a large cost for its coffers, in the event of an environmental catastrophe, by loading it onto a mandatory relationship stipulated between the citizen and the insurance company. As many countries do, then, with health services that are provided on the basis of a private policy, no more and no less.

A new very expensive tax

It will be a tax, but it will not be progressive, nor equalizing. It is likely that for the stone house inhabited by the elderly, several square meters larger than necessary, in a mountain village at risk of landslides it will be quite a bloodbath, compared to a comfortable villa in the center of a non-seismic metropolis like Milan. It will be the final push to the depopulation of the internal and disadvantaged areas. But be careful, because as we well know, if no one remains to do the maintenance of the mountain, not even the plain is safe.

Then we will have to look at the risk tables. I don’t dare to imagine how the seismic risk will be assessed in Irpinia or Belice. Those who, like me, live in a city that has flooded three times in 16 months, insuring themselves against floods will probably be like taking out car insurance at the price applied to those who have to go and run the Dakar rally.

And may bad luck prevent the occurrence of a “catastrophic event”. Because it’s easy to say “flood”, but you need to know that, for insurance companies, there is a flood, an overflow, an inundation depending on where the water arrives and with what force. The story of someone who – during last year’s flood in Romagna – miraculously found himself spared by the river water, remains a classic, but due to the same very strong rainfall found himself with copious leaks and infiltrations from the roof. In that case it was neither a flood, nor an overflow, nor an inundation, but wetting. And you could see the insurance agent throwing up his hands, claiming that in this case the water had come from above and not from below, and therefore the insurance was not liable for the damage.

What is the “catastrophic event”?

But above all, and let’s go back to the beginning, what is actually a “catastrophic event”? In Traversara – the hamlet of Bagnacavallo (Ravenna) now sadly famous for having had the misfortune of being overwhelmed by the fury of the Lamone river, which broke its banks right there – were the houses destroyed by Jupiter Pluvius who sent too much rain or by the embankment under the jurisdiction of the Region, whose breach created a high-pressure tap of water, mud and logs against the walls of the buildings until they were demolished?

The principle, on the other hand, was established by the same Minister of Civil Protection Nello Musumeci, who in a radio interview said: “Let’s stop saying ‘I’ve never seen so much’, it has become routine with climate change”. If it is routine, there is also someone responsible for what goes wrong in ordinary actions, given that we can no longer blame fate or climate change that sent us a damned extraordinary and unpredictable event. In short, the State can introduce compulsory insurance, but it should not think it can get away with it like this, because there is also the right of recourse that makes the wheel turn. And in the event of omissions on a dam or bad governance of the territory, insurance companies – unlike ordinary citizens – are very patient with the timing of justice and know how to defend their interests very well in court…