Cantiano, Italy – Italian authorities said that floods swept through several towns, Friday, in central Italy after hours of exceptionally heavy rain, leaving 10 people dead and at least 4 missing. Dozens of survivors scrambled onto rooftops or trees, waiting for rescue.
The floods swept through garages and basements and destroyed doors. In one city, a strong rush of water pushed a car onto a second-floor balcony, while vehicles parked elsewhere were piled on top of each other in the streets. Some agricultural fields near the sea were yards under water.
“It wasn’t a water bomb, it was a tsunami,” Barbara’s mayor, Riccardo Pasqualini, told Italian state radio about the sudden rain Thursday night that devastated his town in the Marche region near the Adriatic Sea.
He said the overnight floods 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 Italian news agency ANSA. Elsewhere in town, a boy was swept out of the arms of his rescued mother.
Prime Minister 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 playing a temporary role before Italy’s national elections on September 25, planned to tour some of the stricken towns later on Friday and his government announced 5 million euros in aid for the region.
About 50 people were treated in hospitals for injuries.
The fire department said on Twitter that dozens of people who were trapped in cars or climbed onto rooftops or trees to escape rising flood waters had been rescued. The police in the town of Sassoverato, unable to reach a man trapped in a car, stretched him a long branch, which the man caught and dragged to safety.
Helicopter crews rescued seven people in remote towns in the Apennine Mountains.
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Hundreds of firefighters on Friday struggled to remove destroyed tree trunks and branches amid thick mud as they searched for people who may have been buried by debris. They waded in waist-high waters through flooded streets, while others rowed in inflatables to fetch survivors.
In the town of Ostra, a father and son were found dead in the flooded garage of their apartment building where they had gone to try to remove their car, and another man was also found trying to remove his motorbike from a garage. TV said. Elsewhere, a man was found dead in his car.
“With (the flood) happening, it was much worse than expected,” said Fabrizio Corcio, head of civil protection. There was a bad weather forecast on Thursday, but not at the highest level.
Hundreds of people fled or were evacuated from their homes until the building was checked for safety and mountains of mud removed.
“It was an extreme event, more than just an exceptional one,” climate scientist Massimiliano Fezzini told Italian state television. Based on his calculations, the amount of rain that fell was concentrated over a four-hour period that included a particularly heavy 15 minutes. The period, it was the most in hundreds of years.
Meteorologists said that summers with almost no rain meant the hillsides were unusually hard and dry, so water was flowing faster on the slopes, adding to their impact.
State television said the area was inundated within a few hours with the amount of rainfall it normally receives in six months.
Some of the worst floods hit the town of Senigallia, where the Mesa River overflowed its banks. The hamlets in the hills near the Renaissance tourist town of Urbino were also flooded when fast-moving rivers of water, mud and debris swept through the streets.
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