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Flash floods in Italy’s Sardinia leave 18 dead
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A cyclone killed 18 people and made hundreds homeless as extreme rainfall flooded eastern parts of the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, Italian authorities said yesterday.
The government declared a state of emergency after Cyclone Cleopatra dropped 450 millimeters of rain in an hour and a half overnight, causing rivers to burst their banks, sweeping away cars and flooding homes across the island.
“This is a national tragedy,” Prime Minister Enrico Letta said.
The declaration of a state of emergency will allow resources to be freed up more quickly to reach devastated areas, with swathes of the island under muddy flood waters that covered cars and swamped houses.
The government also set aside 20 million euros (US$27 million) in immediate emergency funds to help the rescue and clean-up work.
The mayor of Olbia, the northeastern Sardinian town among the worst-affected areas, said the sudden flooding had burst “like a bomb” with the same amount of water falling in 90 minutes as falls in the city of Milan in six months.
Mayor Gianni Giovannelli said houses across the area had been left half-submerged by the floods and rescuers were still searching for possible victims.
“We’ve just found a dead child we had been searching all night for,” he told SkyTG24 television.
Beyond the immediate casualties, the disaster raised questions about how well prepared Italy’s cash-strapped local governments are to deal with sudden emergencies.
“We’re facing an exceptional event here which has put our system of territorial planning and management into crisis,” said Antonello Frau, deputy head of the island’s geological service.
Other parts of Italy were also hit by heavy rains yesterday, including the capital, Rome, and Venice in the north, where residents and tourists donned rubber boots to slosh through a St Marks’ Square flooded from the “acqua alta” high tides that periodically submerge the lagoon city.
Flooding and landslides have been common in Italy, dominated in many areas by rugged mountain ranges.
Legambiente, Italy’s main environmental group, said the disaster showed there was an urgent need to step up measures to handle floods and other disasters, a call backed by the national geological council.
It said more than 6 million Italians faced a potential risk from flooding but it said the risk had been made worse by reckless building, particularly in coastal areas.
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