The Government of Italy will approve next Tuesday the declaration of a state of calamity in order to deliver aid to the Emilia-Romagna region, victim of one of the worst floods in recent times in Italy. The red alert continues this Thursday due to the storm that has caused damage estimated at billions of euros, according to the regional president, Stefano Bonaccini, who explained that rainfall equivalent to the average of six months has fallen in two days and has compared its effects to those of an "earthquake."
Today five bodies have been found in addition to the eight fatalities found yesterday. Among the latest, a couple of farmers, aged 73 and 71, who have been found in their apartment in Russi, in the province of Ravenna, after their son failed to contact them. Another of the victims is a woman that the water dragged from her house to a beach 20 kilometers away.
There is still one missing person and some 20,000 people have had to be evacuated after the water has flooded 24 municipalities and all the rivers in the region have overflowed. Up to 27,000 inhabitants are still without electricity. Even some neighborhoods in the city of Bologna have been affected. In some areas of Faenza, Cesena and Forlì entire towns have been submerged. In a few minutes he entered the ground floors of the houses. A total of 250 roads have been closed due to the risk of landslides.
The Italian Government has announced that it will allocate another 20 million euros to the emergency, in addition to the 10 million already announced two weeks ago when there were initial floods, in which two people lost their lives. But they could be few, because, according to Bonaccini, around a billion euros in damages have already been lost. The luxury car manufacturer Ferrari, based in the region, has announced the donation of one million euros.
“The damage caused by the storm in Emilia-Romagna is incalculable today because it has not yet ended. We will be able to calculate it in the next few days and that is why we will hold the Council of Ministers on Tuesday", said the Minister of Agriculture, Francesco Lollobrigida. Another problem is that the affected areas are areas with a large agricultural production, including the so-called valley of the fruit. More than 5,000 farms, according to Coldiretti, the largest farmers' association, have been flooded.
Heavy rains have led to the suspension of the Formula 1 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix, which was to be held on Sunday at the Imola circuit, but not a Bruce Springsteen concert that will take place today in the city of Ferrara, something that has caused controversy.
Everything comes after months of drought, something that has worsened the situation, since the land was not capable of absorbing water. These floods are just the latest of the extreme weather events that have hit Italy in the last year, including storms, avalanches and droughts, and experts warn that they will become more frequent due to climate change.
On the island of Ischia, in the Gulf of Naples, heavy rains caused a huge landslide six months ago that killed 12 people. The same thing happened in September, in the midst of the electoral campaign, in the Marche region, where 11 people lost their lives in other severe floods while in July, an ice avalanche caused by high temperatures killed another 11 people. “Climate change is here and we are living its consequences. It is not a remote perspective, it is the new normality", assured Paola Pino d'Astore, an expert from the Italian Society for Environmental Geology. Meanwhile, in Emilia-Romagna the nightmare has not ended and this weekend even more rainfall is expected that could aggravate the situation.
