Bad weather: 500 roads closed, Emilia Romagna stops in the mud

Over 500 roads closed in Emilia Romagna. First of all, there are the dead and the displaced, of course. But also the data on the interrupted road network gives a sense of the size of the disaster caused by the floods that devastated the region. Villages and hamlets continue to be isolated precisely because of the difficulty of the means of the rescuers to reach the affected locations. So much so that Viabilità Italia - the coordination table active at the Traffic Police - advises motorists not to travel in the provinces of Forlì-Cesena and Ravenna, precisely to leave free circulation to vehicles engaged in rescue and restoration. And with the risk of landslides following that of flooding, the situation is likely to remain critical for several more days.
About twenty rivers have flooded and hundreds of minor drainage channels in the countryside: it means that water and mud have overwhelmed all the communication arteries within a hundred kilometers. Motorways were affected by a ten-kilometre carriageway swap on the A14 and flooding on the D14. Slowdowns due to flooding also in the underlying SS16.
And to give breathing space to mobility, the Metropolitan City of Bologna has obtained permission from the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport and Autostrade per l'Italia to reopen an old stretch of motorway to circumvent landslides.
This is the SP325 of Val di Setta and Val di Bisenzio, which for its initial stretch from Sasso Marconi to Lagaro runs parallel to the A1 Bologna-Florence and the Variante di Valico, which suffered landslides that completely interrupted its transitability at km 7. Restoration work will be lengthy. Next to the unusable section runs in double carriageway the old route of the A1, abandoned for many years, but apparently passable. Work is therefore underway to make possible an urgent and temporary use for the provincial road network of one of the two carriageways of this section.
And if some roads can be passable again after the work of the technicians that has already begun where the bad weather has given a respite, for other arteries it will be a matter of redoing them from scratch because they have been completely destroyed.
Long times, therefore, for the return to normality.