In Emilia-Romagna, the death toll from the severe floods is rising – and after only a short break in the rain, the water is also rising again. Massimo Isola, mayor of the city of Faenza, spoke of an "epochal accident" on Italian television on Friday in view of the floods and the many landslides. Shortly before, the body of an elderly man had been found in his community, according to media reports, in the mud in front of his house. The man is the 14th dead after the severe storms in northern Italy.
While in some places people were busy cleaning up and destroyed pieces of furniture and other belongings were piled up in front of the houses, there was still a high level of alarm.
Especially around the city of Ravenna, the situation came to a head again on Friday. After it started raining again, rivers burst their banks again. Water flowed over an expressway directly towards the city center, as TV footage showed. Many residents of the city near the Adriatic Sea were asked to leave their homes, police officers went from door to door. More than 20,000 people were evacuated in Ravenna alone, according to the media.
Worries about new rains
The new rains increased the worries of many people. The rainfall is unlikely to be "comparable" with those that reached historic proportions at the beginning of the week and led to the catastrophic consequences, Irene Priolo, the region's vice president, said on Italian television. However, the rain could lead to further landslides.
In a district of the municipality of Sarsina, more than 300 people were cut off from the outside world, as Mayor Enrico Cangini said, according to the Ansa news agency. Of the four roads that led to their houses, only one was still to be used by emergency vehicles - these brought, among other things, with a tank of drinking water. "Some people were evacuated by helicopters," Cangini said.
Meanwhile, it was reported that the Canale Emiliano Romagnolo, an artificial canal running across the region, had overflowed in some places. People who lived nearby were told to go to higher floors. Meanwhile, workers are using excavators to try to close broken dams.
Many hundreds of firefighters, civil defence, military and other organisations, as well as countless volunteers from all parts of Italy, have been working in Emilia-Romagna for days. For the next few days, it remains at the highest alert level in many places.
While the areas around Imola, Forlì, Cesena and Ravenna are hit hard, the places on the Adriatic coast, which are particularly popular with tourists, such as Rimini, got off relatively lightly. Tourism Minister Daniela Santanchè reported on Friday: "The only positive news, if one can speak of positive at all in this tragedy, is that hotels and the coastal strips were less badly damaged than the inland areas."