COPY LINK

STORMS

Italy floods: Over 36,000 people displaced as Meloni leaves G7 summit early

More than 36,000 people have now been forced from their homes by deadly floods in northeast Italy, regional officials said on Saturday, as rising waters swallowed more houses and fresh landslides isolated hamlets

Published: 21 May 2023 10:08 CEST

Italy floods: Over 36,000 people displaced as Meloni leaves G7 summit early

Photo: Andreas SOLARO/AFP.

Violent downpours earlier this week killed 14 people, transforming streets in the cities and towns of the Emilia Romagna region into rivers.

And as more rain fell, regional authorities extended the red weather alert to Sunday.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Saturday she was leaving the G7 summit in Japan early to deal with the emergency.

“Frankly I cannot remain so far from Italy in such a complex moment,” she told reporters, thanking the 5,000 people — from rescue workers to volunteers — mobilised to help those hit by the floods.

She also thanked her fellow G7 leaders for their offers of aid.

Meloni was expected to visit some of the worst-hit areas on Sunday.

The authorities in Ravenna on Saturday ordered the immediate evacuation of more at-risk hamlets.

A helicopter involved in attempts to restore electricity crashed Saturday near Lugo, injuring one of the four people on board, the fire service said.

Six months’ worth of rain fell in 36 hours in the Emilia-Romagna region, with the floods described as the worst the country has seen in a century.

The floods have caused over 305 landslides and damaged or closed over 500 roads in the region.

“The water began to rise at 2pm (on Friday), coming from across the fields,” after nearby canals were swollen by flooded rivers, electrician Mauro Lodola told AFP.

“It’s difficult. I want it to be over quickly, to be able to go forwards… to pick ourselves up,” the 54-year-old said, standing thigh-high in the dirty water surrounding his house.

Lodola choked up as he showed his ruined house, the water lapping around the fridge in the kitchen and against the mattress on his bed, which was piled high with salvaged furniture.

Outside, a white door floated past a shed, where chickens who had been moved to safety clucked nervously.

Bologna’s mayor Matteo Lepore said Saturday it would take “months, and in some places maybe years” for roads and infrastructure to be repaired.

Member comments

Become a Member to leave a comment.

Elsewhere in Switzerland, a man was found dead in a hotel in Saas-Grund in the southwest canton of Valais, police said, adding that he was probably taken by surprise by a sudden rapid rise in floodwater.

Images published in the online publication 20minuten showed parts of the town covered in a thick layer of mud and rocks.

Another man is also missing in Valais, police said.

In France, three people in their 70s and 80s died in the northeastern Aube region on Saturday when a falling tree crushed the car they were travelling in, the local authority told AFP.

A fourth passenger was in critical care, it added.

Switzerland’s civil security services said “several hundred” people were evacuated in the southern canton of Valais and roads closed after the Rhone and its tributaries overflowed in different locations.

The situation in Valais was “under control” Sunday, Frederic Favre, the official responsible for civil security, told a press conference, but he warned that it would remain “fragile” for the next several days.

Emergency services were assessing the best way to evacuate 300 people who had arrived for a football tournament in the mountain town of Peccia, while almost 70 more were being evacuated from a holiday camp in the village of Mogno.

The poor weather was making rescue work particularly difficult, police had said earlier, with several valleys in the southern cantons of Ticino and Valais near the border with Italy, inaccessible and cut off from the electricity network.

In Ticino, some 400 people — including 40 children from a holiday camp — had to be evacuated from risk areas and taken to civil protection centres.

The federal alert system also said part of the canton was without drinking water.

Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis, who is from Ticino, said the repeated disasters “have touched us deeply”.

It’s the worst flooding experienced in the canton since 2000 when 13 people were killed in a mudslide which destroyed the village of Gondo.

Scientists say climate change driven by human activity is increasing the severity, frequency and length of extreme weather events such as floods and storms.

Italy flooding

In northern Italy, Piedmont and the Aosta Valley also suffered flooding and mudslides, though no deaths were reported.

Firefighters in Piedmont announced Sunday morning that they had carried out 80 operations to rescue people in difficulty.

A mudslide temporarily blocked a regional road to the ski resort of Cervinia in the Aosta Valley, a semi-autonomous region located along the border with France and Switzerland.

A river which burst its banks caused significant damage to the centre of the town where several streets were flooded.

A mudslide blocked access to Cogne, a village of 1,300 people in the Aosta Valley, where 90 millimetres of rainfall was recorded in a six-hour period on Saturday.

At the European football championships in Germany, a match between Germany and Denmark Saturday evening was interrupted for almost half an hour because of heavy rain and lighting.

bur-vog/cls/db/gv