After the floods on Tuesday and especially Wednesday, the situation in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna eased slightly on Thursday. According to the authorities, at least two people died as a result of the heavy rains. In Castel Bolognese, in the province of Ravenna, an 80-year-old cyclist was swept away by the floods of the Senio river and drowned. In Fontanelice, near Bologna, a 74-year-old man died in the rubble of his home, which had been destroyed by a landslide.
Matthias Rüb
Political correspondent for Italy, the Vatican, Albania and Malta, based in Rome.
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More than 500 people had to spend the second night in a row in emergency shelters because their houses and apartments had been further trapped or made uninhabitable by the masses of water.
Regional President Stefano Bonaccini, who had seen the situation in the hardest-hit areas on Wednesday, asked the government in Rome to declare a state of emergency so that aid payments could be made quickly. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni assured that she was closely following developments in the flooded areas and held out the prospect of the requested help. On Wednesday evening, the responsible minister, Nello Musumeci, signed a decree to mobilise national aid workers and release the first aid payments.
According to civil protection chief Fabrizio Curcio, more than 24 millimeters of rain fell in the affected regions within 140 hours, which was more than a fifth of the average national annual rainfall. The soils, which had dried out due to the weeks of drought, could not have absorbed the rain masses, Curcio said. Several rivers in the area around the regional capital Bologna as well as in Faenza and near the coastal city of Ravenna, namely the Senio, the Sillaro and the Lamone, had burst their banks on Wednesday night and flooded large areas. Power outages occurred in many houses and apartments, and the supply of natural gas was also interrupted.
At Bologna Airport, take-offs and landings had to be suspended. Numerous flooded roads were closed, and rail traffic around the capital of the region also had to be temporarily suspended. Schools and authorities in the particularly affected areas remained closed on Thursday. There were also severe storms in Liguria and Tuscany.
The water level in the Po, the longest river in the country, which had fallen to extremely low values due to the drought in recent months, rose within a short time by a good one and a half meters, said the agricultural association Coldiretti. Fields and meadows as well as fruit and wine-growing crops are now under water after suffering from the drought in recent weeks, Coldiretti complained. In addition, numerous buildings and roads were affected.