The human toll of the floods that hit Emilia-Romagna, a rich agricultural and tourist region in northern Italy, worsened further Friday, May 19, rising to 14 deaths, we learned from local authorities. Rescue workers were still evacuating isolated people from their homes surrounded by the flood and the rain began to fall again after more than 24 hours of calm.
In Ravenna, the authorities decreed the "urgent and immediate evacuation" of several neighborhoods and streets Friday morning and appealed to the population to "move only in case of necessity". From thirteen dead, "the human toll rose to fourteen" Friday, told AFP a spokesman for the region, specifying that it was a man found drowned in his house in Faenza.
This is another earthquake.
Stefano Bonaccini, President of Emilia-Romagna
In this town at the epicenter of the floods, AFP journalists met Friday haggard residents who were trying to clear the muddy pile, taking furniture and appliances covered in dirt out of their homes. However, the situation seemed to stabilize elsewhere as the water slowly ebbed. Residents and road services were hard at work cleaning houses, businesses and streets overgrown with mud and debris, and roads that had been submerged or washed away were once again open to traffic.
The material damage amounts to billions of euros. A new disaster for the region devastated in 2012 by an earthquake and two weeks ago by the first floods. "This is a new earthquake," lamented Friday morning on television the president of the region, Stefano Bonaccini. "Orchard of Italy", Emilia-Romagna owes part of its prosperity to the cultivation of fruit and vegetables, but also to its tourism and the automotive industry built around Ferrari.
'Climate change'
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We will rebuild everything. But the agri-food and market gardening sector needs to be compensated 100%. We had drought, frost, and now these dramatic floods," Bonaccini said. "When it comes to tourism, fortunately the [Adriatic, east] coast is less concerned," he added. For the Italian Nobel Prize in Physics Giorgio Parisi, these floods are to be attributed to "climate change, rising temperatures" and "we have to get used to it". "We need a real energy transition," he said in an interview with Corriere della Sera.
Italy's post-pandemic recovery plan, with €190 billion in EU funds committed to the peninsula, "is a good opportunity" to accelerate this transition, according to Bonaccini. The government will put on the agenda of the council of ministers Tuesday "the suspension of tax and contributory deadlines" for companies affected by bad weather in Emilia-Romagna.