FLOODS IN ITALY KILL 10; SURVIVORS PLUCKED FROM ROOFS, TREES
CANTIANO, Italy — Flash floods swept through several towns Friday, Sept. 16, 2022, in hilly central Italy after hours of exceptionally heavy rain, leaving 10 people dead and at least four missing, authorities said. Dozens of survivors scrambled onto rooftops or up trees to await rescue.
Floods invaded garages and basements and knocked down doors. In one town, the powerful rush of water pushed a car onto a second-story balcony, while elsewhere parked vehicles were crumpled on top of each other in the streets. Some farm fields near the sea were meters (yards) under water.
“It wasn’t a water bomb, it was a tsunami,” Riccardo Pasqualini, the mayor of Barbara, told Italian state radio about the sudden downpour Thursday night that devastated his town in the Marche region near the Adriatic Sea.
He said the overnight flooding left the town’s 1,300 residents without drinking water.
A mother and her young daughter were missing after trying to escape the floods, Pasqualini told the Italian news agency ANSA.
Elsewhere in town, a boy was swept away from the arms of his mother, who was rescued.
Premier Mario Draghi told a news conference in Rome that there were 10 confirmed deaths and four people were missing in the flash floods. He thanked the rescuers “for their professionalism, dedication and courage.”
Draghi, who is serving in a careIZIUM, taker role ahead of Italy’s Sept. 25 national election, planned to tour some devastated towns later Friday and his government announced 5 million euros in aid to the region.
Some 50 people were treated at hospitals for injuries.
The fire department tweeted that dozens of people who had been trapped in cars or had climbed up to rooftops or trees to escape rising floodwaters had been rescued. Police in the town of Sassoferrato, unable to reach a man trapped in a car, extending a long branch to him, which the man grabbed and was pulled to safety.
Helicopter crews rescued seven people in remote towns of the Apennine Mountains.
Hundreds of firefighters struggled Friday to remove toppled tree trunks and branches amid thick mud as they searched for people who could have been buried by debris. They waded through waisthigh water in flooded streets, while others paddled in rubber dinghies to scoop up survivors. /