Rome, Nov 3, (dpa/GNA) – At least five people died in Italy’s central region of Tuscany as a night of severe storms and torrential rain not seen in centuries caused chaos in towns and villages, officials said on Friday.
Other countries, including France, Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, were also lashed by storms caused by the low-pressure system Ciaran, with a number of deaths reported.
In Tuscany, several people were injured and went missing as floodwaters, also swept through parts of the popular holiday region. Some areas recorded 1.9 metres of rainfall in just three hours.
“Never before have we recorded so much rain in so few minutes,” the President of Tuscany, Eugenio Giani, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, after declaring a state of emergency in the early morning.
The municipalities of Campi Bisenzio, Prato, and Quarrata in the province of Prato were particularly hard hit as a local river broke its banks. Videos on social media showed cars in a street in Campi Bisenzio being swept away by the masses of water.
Prato’s mayor Matteo Biffoni spoke of “an event that, as far as we know, has not happened for at least two centuries.”
Some hospitals were flooded and the storm turned roads in several villages into torrents of water and mud. Seen from the air, the area just northwest of Florence resembled a landscape of lakes, with entire streets and fields lying underwater.
The fire service was called out to more than 1,000 incidents in the area and around 48,000 households were left without electricity. Parts of the motorway 11 were closed and rail traffic suffered major disruptions.
GNA