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Schools closed and trains cancelled as storms batter northern Italy

Italy's Veneto region was on red alert and 15 other Italian regions issued with weather warnings on Wednesday as heavy rains struck the north and centre of the country.

Published: 28 February 2024 11:29 CET

Schools closed and trains cancelled as storms batter northern Italy

Heavy rains have caused significant disruption in northern and central Italy. Photo by Marco BERTORELLO / AFP.

Train services between Milan and Venice remained suspended as of Wednesday morning, having been closed since Tuesday afternoon due a risk of flooding on the line between Vicenza and Padua.

“Traffic remains suspended between Vicenza and Padua due to critical weather conditions which are causing the risk of flooding of some rivers,” national rail operator Trenitalia wrote in an update on its website.

Vicenza’s Mayor Giacomo Possamai described the city’s situation in a video message as “critical” and “very concerning”, adding that the River Retrone’s level was continuing to rise after the river had already overflowed in several places.

“There are various reports of flooding in the city, especially of cellars, there are many roads closed,” he said.

“I ask everyone to limit their movements to those that are absolutely necessary, to stay in their homes, and to avoid going into basements especially in areas close to the river.”

The city’s schools were closed throughout the day, following numerous closures in Tuscany on Tuesday.

Italy’s fire service wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that its workers had carried out more than 60 interventions in Veneto as of early Wednesday morning.

#Maltempo in #Veneto prosegue il lavoro dei #vigilidelfuoco: oltre 60 soccorsi svolti, monitorato il livello del fiume Retrone a #Vicenza. Nella clip il recupero di stanotte di un albero che ostruiva il corso del Bacchiglione a Vicenza, a viale Margherita [#28febbraio 7:30] pic.twitter.com/Wf5wRwysgQ

— Vigili del Fuoco (@vigilidelfuoco) February 28, 2024

Multiple landslides have been reported in the Liguria region, including a mudslide in Pieve Ligure that narrowly grazed a school bus and temporarily cut off 1,000 of the town’s residents and displaced others.

In Tuscany, 18 families were evacuated from their homes as a precautionary measure in the town of Montemurlo following a landslide, and a series of landslides in the province of Lucca caused buses to be diverted.

As well as the red alert for Veneto, Italy’s Civil Protection Department placed parts of Emilia-Romagna under an ‘orange’ weather warning on Wednesday.

📅 Mercoledì #28febbraio
🔔🔴 #allertaROSSA meteo-idro su parte del Veneto
🔔🟠 #allertaARANCIONE in Emilia-Romagna e Veneto
🔔🟡 #allertaGIALLA in 16 regioni.
⛈💨 Piogge e venti forti al Sud. Leggi l'avviso meteo del #27febbraio 👉 https://t.co/TOk0WjjDwW #protezionecivile pic.twitter.com/0PbOvCFYFX

— Dipartimento Protezione Civile (@DPCgov) February 27, 2024

Friuli Venezia Giulia, Trentino Alto Adige, Lombardy, Piedmont, Tuscany, Abruzzo, Umbria, Lazio, Campania, Molise, Calabria, Basilicata, Sicily and Sardinia were issued with lower-risk ‘yellow’ warnings.

In the government’s colour-coded tiered warning system, a red alert is the most severe weather warning, indicating a severe threat to public safety and human life.

An orange alert represents a moderate threat to public safety alongside a risk of landslides, flooding, and sinkholes, while the yellow alert indicates an occasional threat to public safety and a lower risk of flooding around waterways.

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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.

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