Thunderstorms pound Tuscany and Liguria, one dead
(ANSA) – Milan, October 22 – Driving rain in Tuscany and Liguria swelled rivers, collapsed bridges, triggered landslides and outages, and led to rescues as well as a death in parts of central and northern Italy on Monday and Tuesday.
A 52-year-old man on Monday died near Siena, in Tuscany, when the truck he was driving ran off a bridge into a brimming canal.
A Tuscan woman, also in the Siena area, was saved by firemen after clinging to a tree for five hours.
The woman, who owns a farm, was trying to lead her five horses to safety when swollen river currents carried her off. Rivers spilled over their banks, forcing the evacuation of about a hundred families, while landslides cut off roads, isolating rural mountain villages.
A state of emergency in Tuscany was declared on Tuesday as the rain and flood waters receded, and authorities began taking stock of the massive damage. Energy company ENEL registered 15,925 lightning strikes over the course of 24 hours.
Fiumetto, a village south of Bologna, was pelted by 130 millimeters of rain in 14 hours. Unusual rainstorms also thumped down on in the northwestern region of Liguria, where police rescued a 20-year-old woman whose car fell into a river following the collapse of a bridge in at 2:00am on Tuesday.
The woman had managed to climb out of the driver’s seat herself. Storms left three Ligurian towns in without gas or water, and triggered numerous landslides.