More rain hits northern Italy as it struggles with deadly flooding

Dark clouds released fresh rain on Friday over the drenched northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna, where flooding in recent days has killed at least 14 people and left thousands homeless.

Hundreds of rescuers toiled through the night to evacuate residents, clear roads of mud and debris, restore electricity and repair telephone masts as officials began to take a fuller picture of the damage in a region that was struggling not so long ago with a persistent drought.

With many fields still drenched in rainfall experts described as almost unheard of — some areas fell nearly 20 inches in 36 hours, about half the annual average — train services were interrupted and many roads remained blocked.

“The situation is constantly changing because it keeps raining,” Luca Cari, a spokesman for the Italian firefighters, said in a telephone interview. “The water is still rising in some areas on the north coast, but even where the water has receded, there is mud everywhere and it is difficult to assess the damage.”

Heavy rains in early May had already saturated the ground and on Tuesday a storm system slowly moving across Italy brought extreme downpours to the same area. With the ground already almost saturated, like a sponge already soaked with water, the rain had nowhere to go but to flow down to the lowest points, flooding rivers, creeks and other low-lying areas.

Television footage on Friday showed tree limbs, garden furniture and other debris floating in muddy water on the streets of Cervia, a coastal town of about 30,000 near Ravenna, where firefighters and civil defense continue to evacuate residents and their pets on rubber Boats. Cervia residents cleared the most dangerous debris from the courtyards, even as the water reached their thighs.

Nearly two dozen rivers burst their banks this week in a vast area between the Apennines – where hilltop villages have been isolated by landslides – and the coast.

About 10,000 people have been evacuated in a disaster many attribute at least in part to a combination of climate change and human development. On Friday, mayors asked residents to move to higher elevations as the latest rainfall threatened more flooding.

This weekend’s rainfall is not expected to match levels seen in recent days, but many areas remain vulnerable: rivers are high and the ground is saturated, so any rain could exacerbate flooding or trigger landslides.

“These relatively short and small rivers that flow between the mountains and the sea have been dry for a year and a half,” said Marina Baldi, a climatologist with Italy’s National Research Council. “They couldn’t handle that much water,” she added.

Ms. Baldi said such intense rains usually hit Italy only once every 100 to 150 years, usually in autumn or winter, not May. “It was an absolutely anomalous phenomenon,” she said, referring to the recent deluges.

The Italian government is expected to declare a state of emergency in the region at a cabinet meeting next week, but has already earmarked €30 million, about $32 million, to help with the response. Government ministers have also raised the possibility of asking the European Union for help.

“We have no damage estimate at the moment,” Rita Nicolini, director of civil protection for the Emilia-Romagna region, told Italian news channel Sky TG24, noting: “We are still in the emergency phase.” She added that the preliminary estimate of more than €1 billion in damages “needs to be multiplied by ten at least”.

Ettore Prandini, president of the farmers’ association Coldiretti, said that calculating the damage to agriculture will only be possible after the water has been withdrawn from vineyards and fields where kiwis, pears and apples grow, among other things. He said many large pig farms are still under water.

In Castel Bolognese, a town of 9,500 between Bologna and San Marino, a 75-year-old man drowned while talking on the phone to a neighbor who had tried to convince him to leave his street-level apartment when the water rose on Wednesday. on one account.

The man, Giovanni Pavani, had thrown sacks of sand on the windowsills and said he felt safe, the neighbor, Marina Giacometti, told Corriere della Sera newspaper.

His last minutes were terrible, according to the newspaper report. “I’m cold, I’m cold, the water is rising,” he told Ms. Giacometti. “I see furniture floating.” Then the line fell silent.

The catastrophe prompted Formula 1 to cancel the Grand Prix in the area this weekend as deadly flooding had made it unsafe to continue the race at Imola, which is in Emilia-Romagna. Ferrari, which has its headquarters in the region, donated €1 million to the regional civil protection agency.

The decision to go ahead with a Bruce Springsteen concert was met with some criticism on social media, even though it took place in Ferrara, far from the flooded areas. “Perhaps it could have been postponed,” Stefano Bonaccini, president of the Emilia-Romagna region, told Italian television.

In the midst of the tragedy, the residents have shown resilience and determination to overcome the anger and despair. On Thursday, the only sunny day this week, volunteers clearing the streets sang a popular folk waltz about love and nostalgia for the region. And the association of hoteliers in the seaside resort of Riccione, hit by the flood this week, announced that hotels would be open and ready to welcome holidaymakers next week.

Judson Jones contributed reporting from Atlanta.