Relief is still working to evacuate people isolated from their homes surrounded by flooding on Friday. The rain has started to fall again after more than 24 hours of calm.
In Ravenna, the authorities decreed the “urgent and immediate evacuation” of several neighborhoods and streets on Friday morning. They appealed to the population to “move only if necessary”.
A death in Faenza
From thirteen deaths, “the human toll rose to fourteen dead” on Friday, a spokesperson for the region told AFP, specifying that it was a man found drowned in his house in Faenza.
In this city, at the epicenter of the floods, AFP journalists met on Friday haggard residents who were trying to clear the pile of mud, removing furniture and household appliances covered in dirt from their homes.
However, the situation seemed to be stabilizing, as the waters slowly ebbed. Residents and road authorities were hard at work cleaning homes, businesses and streets overrun with mud and debris, and roads that had been submerged or washed away were reopened to traffic.
Billions of euros in damage
The material damage amounts to billions of euros. A new disaster for the region devastated in 2012 by an earthquake then two weeks ago by the first floods. “What we are experiencing is a new earthquake,” region president Stefano Bonaccini said on television on Friday morning.
“Orchard of Italy”, Emilia-Romagna owes part of its prosperity to the cultivation of fruit and vegetables, but also to its tourism and the automobile industry built around Ferrari.
100% compensation?
“We will rebuild everything. But the agri-food and market gardening sector needs to be compensated 100%. We had the drought, the frost, and now these dramatic floods”, recalled Stefano Bonaccini. “When it comes to tourism, fortunately the coast [adriatique, à l’est] is less affected,” he added.
For the Italian Nobel Prize in Physics Giorgio Parisi, these floods are due to “climate change, rising temperatures” and “we have to get used to it”. “We need a real energy transition,” he said in an interview with Corriere della Sera.
Accelerate the transition
The post-pandemic recovery plan from which Italy benefits, with 190 billion European funds committed for the peninsula, “is a good opportunity” to accelerate this transition, according to Stefano Bonaccini.
The government will put on the agenda of the Council of Ministers on Tuesday “the suspension of tax and contribution deadlines” for companies damaged by bad weather in Emilia-Romagna.
2023-05-19 11:48:49
#Death #toll #rises #northern #Italy
