Floods in Tuscany cause five deaths

At least five people have died in Tuscany, Italy, due to widespread flooding, local officials said Friday, after Storm Ciaran barreled into the country overnight with heavy rain on a path of destruction across Western Europe.

Ciaran left a trail of damage and several deaths after it made landfall in northwestern France late Wednesday with record-breaking winds and moved north. Casualties were reported in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain on Thursday, along with flooding and damage.

On Friday, the president of the Tuscany region, Eugenio Giani, said almost eight inches of rain had fallen there in just three hours, the equivalent of what the area normally receives in “the entire month of November.” In a post on social media, he wrote that the government had declared a state of emergency in Tuscany.

Most of the victims died because water entered their homes or cars, according to local authorities, who said on Friday that two people were missing.

The hardest hit area was northwest of Florence, where the Bisenzio River and smaller creeks flooded. The water washed away cars and flooded three hospitals, houses and some public buildings. Schools in parts of Tuscany were closed on Friday and train lines and highways experienced disruptions.

Firefighters on inflatable boats helped evacuate residents in parts of Tuscany on Friday as wind gusts of more than 75 miles per hour continued to hit the coast and forecasters predicted more rain.

Matteo Biffoni, the mayor of Prato, posted photos on Facebook of rising waters, overturned cars and flooded health buildings in the city, north of Florence. The scenes were a “shock” and “a punch in the stomach,” he wrote in a post on Friday.

“But even after an evening and night of destruction,” he added, “we are rolling up our sleeves to clean up and get our city back to normal.”

Italy has been hit hard by heavy rainfall and flooding in recent years. In May, widespread flooding in the northern region of Emilia-Romagna caused 15 deaths and left thousands homeless.

Last year, a landslide caused by heavy rainfall killed eleven residents on the southern Italian island of Ischia.

While it’s difficult to attribute individual weather events directly to climate change, scientists say a warming planet is worsening the extreme rainfall experienced by many storms.