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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 December 2024
The minor events
When we mention the relationship between climate change and extreme events, the focus is usually on those impacts described as disasters. Nowadays, there are many accounting and monitoring tools used to describe major impact events, for precipitation, wind or fire (ANCE/CRESME, 2012; ISPRA, 2020). However, major events are only a part of climate-related extreme impacts. There are a number of minor events, with a significantly higher frequency, which are not particularly considered in the statistics, and which escape monitoring. These minor events are beginning to occur cyclically in the same territories, causing effects by their repetition that are not normally quantified or monitored by studies on the relationship between climate change and disaster. This chapter will attempt to enlighten the role of these minor events in increasing local vulnerability. We will carry out this analysis in correlation with a disaster event of international relevance: Vaia Storm of 26– 30 October 2018 in Northeastern Italy. We will explore the relationship between minor events in the same territory and Vaia Storm, to understand the differences in impacts and reactions activated by these two types of phenomena.
Major events ontology
The evolution of a major event starts with the manifestation of a catastrophe (Thom, 1980) and causes a deviation from the linear state of normality towards a state of exception. This evolutionary process may cross the boundary of non-self-sufficiency and require the intervention of external organizations of equal or higher standing to return to a state of normality (UNISDR 2015; Bertin et al, 2020). When a major event, definable as a disaster, occurs, aside the technical support system, an informal solidarity system usually comes into play. In Italy, the technical support system is the National Civil Protection System (see Chapter 12), which, by employing mainly voluntary personnel, acts in the territory bringing in means, resources and basic goods, and suspending the normal rules of management of tenders and supplies to favour rapid resolution. The informal solidarity system operates alongside this formal system by collecting funds and donations to help the affected population and restore damaged heritage.
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