At least eight people have been killed in violent storms in Italy. However, the country's civil protection authority is not giving the all-clear.
Rome – In Italy, the regions of Emilia-Romagna and Marche, which border the Adriatic coast, have experienced flooding since Tuesday, May 16, due to exceptionally heavy rainfall. The storms have claimed at least eight lives so far, and several people are missing. Meanwhile, the Italian civil protection warns of further precipitation on Thursday – there is a red alert.
Severe weather in Italy: Months of rain fall within a few hours
The recent rainfall in northern Italy has been so heavy that 21 out of 23 rivers in the affected region have burst their banks and flooding has occurred in over 30 municipalities. It rained as much within a few hours as usual in several months. Residents in the hardest-hit provinces of Ravenna, Forlì-Cesena, Rimini and Bologna had taken refuge from the masses of water, some of them on the roofs of their houses. In more than 600 operations since Tuesday morning, the fire brigade rescued people, some of them from their cars or houses. 50,000 residents were temporarily without electricity and 100,000 without a mobile phone network, thousands had been evacuated.
Carabinieri carry residents piggyback through the flooded streets. The Italian regions of Emilia-Romagna and Marche continue to be hit by severe storms. © Arma dei Carabinieri/dpa
The floods come after a drought in Italy. The parched soils cannot absorb the water masses. "If soil remains dry for a long time, it does not become more receptive, but cemented," Italian Civil Protection Minister Sebastiano "Nello" Musumeci said at a press conference. Then the rainwater flows over the surface, "which brings absolutely unimaginable destruction," the politician of the neo-fascist ruling party Fratelli d'Italia continued, calling for a national hydraulic engineering plan to arm Italy against the increasingly tropical weather. The situation remains dangerous, the minister warned.
Italian Civil Protection issues red alert for Thursday
The danger has not yet been averted: The Italian civil protection on Wednesday again called on residents of northern Italy to avoid unnecessary trips by car and, if possible, to work from home. Red alert continues to apply in the Emilia-Romagna region, but the orange warning level has been issued for parts of Emilia-Romagna, Marche and Tuscany. According to the civil protection authority, a Tunisian cyclone is now heading for the central Adriatic Sea and is expected to bring further precipitation and storms on Thursday and Friday.
The mayor of the city of Bologna, Matteo Lepore, urged residents to "be extremely careful". Under no circumstances should they take their car. Those who could not get to safety on higher floors should leave the houses, the politician wrote on Instagram. The mayor of the affected city of Cesenatico, Matteo Gozzoli, also warned that the situation remains "critical". "We still have difficult hours ahead of us," it said in a Facebook video.
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Schools in Bologna, the capital of the Emilia-Romagna region, as well as in Faenza, Ravenna and Forlì remained closed for the time being. Formula 1 made the decision to cancel the Imola Grand Prix scheduled for next weekend in the Emilia-Romagna region. The paddock at the racetrack had already been cleared on Tuesday because a nearby river threatened to overflow.
Climate experts predict that extreme weather events will become more frequent as a result of climate change. Two weeks ago, there were severe floods and landslides in the Emilia-Romagna region, killing two people.
