L'Aquila, 27 November (LaPresse) – In the second appeal trial underway in Perugia for the tragedy of the Rigopiano hotel in Farindola (Pescara), destroyed by an avalanche in January 2017 with 29 victims and 11 survivors, the defence lawyers of Emilio Primavera, former director of the Civil Protection Department of the Abruzzo Region eight years ago and defendant in the second appeal, have requested his exclusion. As ordered by the Court of Cassation in Rome, the director is again on trial, but his lawyers have requested “the rejection of the appeal by the Attorney General” and the confirmation of the acquittal, obtained in the first instance, pronounced for the engineer by the Court of Pescara. This is because, despite taking prompt action, the engineer would not have been able to draw up an avalanche map in time, given that he had only taken up his post in the Region about twenty months before the tragedy. The manager is being defended by lawyers Vittorio Manes and Augusto La Morgia. The defence argued that the engineer would have taken at least four years to draw up the “Carta Clpv” (map of probable avalanche locations), as confirmed by the court's experts. This is the time required for the preliminary phase alone, but the avalanche destroyed the resort in 2017, with work on the Avalanche Map due to be completed two and a half years after the tragedy. According to the lawyers, it would therefore not be possible to “predict the event” with reference to Primavera's conduct, even if one wanted to insist on its predictability.