Storms and wildfires kill seven in Italy as
extreme weather continues
Three people killed in Sicily fires and four in
northern storms as hundreds forced to flee homes
Lorenzo
Tondo in Palermo and Angela Giuffrida in Rome
Tue 25 Jul
2023 18.58 BST
Seven
people have died in the past 24 hours as two extreme weather events split Italy
between wildfires in the south and violent storms in the north.
Fires in
Sicily caused the temporary closure of Palermo airport after temperatures in
the city climbed to 47C on Monday.
An
88-year-old woman was reported to have died on Tuesday in San Martino delle
Scale, a few miles from the Sicilian capital, after disruption caused by the
fires prevented emergency services from reaching her in time. In the afternoon,
the bodies of two people, aged around 75 and 77, were found in a house hit by a
wildfire in Cinisi, near the airport.
Authorities
closed part of the motorway as more than 55 wildfires were reported on the
island. Hundreds of firefighters from other regions in Italy were due to arrive
to help battle the flames.
“We have
never seen anything like it,” a San Martino delle Scale resident told Italy’s
Ansa news agency. “We were surrounded by fire. We could not go anywhere. We
spent the night in the square. These were terrible moments.”
The storms
in Lombardy claimed four lives, including that of a 16-year-old girl who was
killed during a camping trip in Cedelogo when a tree fell on her tent.
A 58-year-old
woman died after being crushed by a tree in Monza and a couple, both aged 19,
died after the driver lost control of their car on a slippery road in Varese.
Near
Palermo, more than 120 families had been evacuated from their homes in
Mondello, Capo Gallo and Poggio Ridente since Monday, as clouds of smoke and
ash advanced towards the city centre, making the air unbreathable, and the
sirens of fire engines and ambulances resounded across the city. More than 200
people in Palermo had sought medical attention for smoke inhalation. In the
early hours of the afternoon, the main streets of the Sicilian capital,
normally crowded with tourists, were almost deserted.
Hundreds of
families were forced to flee the Borgo Nuovo district, a few miles from the city
centre, because of the fires.
“We have
lost everything”, said one resident. ‘‘I had not time to pack. Now I need to
find a place to sleep tonight.”
Temperatures
in Palermo soared on Monday, breaking the previous record for the city of 44.8C
set in 1999. The National Institute for Astrophysics said 47C was recorded at
its digital weather station at the top of the medieval Palazzo dei Normanni at
3.42pm.
Hospitals
across the city reported a sharp rise in the number of people seeking emergency
care for heat-related illnesses. Hundreds of patients at Hospital Cervello, in
the north of Palermo, were evacuated and moved to another health facility, and
two hospitals had suspended routine appointments.
The church
of the convent of Santa Maria di Gesù, dating back to the 15th century, and
located in the outskirts of Palermo, was also hit by the flames.
In the east
Sicilian city of Catania, temperatures were close to 47C and people were
struggling with power cuts and water supply problems. The local airport,
Italy’s fifth-biggest, was closed last week after a fire in a terminal building
and has reopened only for a few flights.
Temperatures
rose to 47.6C in some parts of southern Italy and were forecast to remain so on
Tuesday before a drop on Wednesday. The European record of 48.8C was registered
in Floridia, Sicily, in August 2021.
The
governor of Sicily, Renato Schifani, has asked the central government in Rome
to declare a state of emergency in the region.
The extreme
heat has led to the deaths of at least six other people within the last two
weeks, including a 50-year-old Tunisian man who died while working on a farm in
Viterbo, in the Lazio region.
Photos on
social media showed a fire threatening the ancient archaeological site of
Segesta. Local authorities said the blaze was put out and the site was
temporarily closed to check for potential damage.
The
farmers’ association, Coldiretti, said Sicily was facing an “unprecedented
catastrophe and incalculable environmental damage”.
The
northern regions were bearing the brunt of the arrival of cooler air from
northern Europe, with more torrential rain and gales forecast in Lombardy,
Trentino Alto Adige, Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia.
On Monday,
stormy weather felled trees and blocked the metro in Milan, and the northern
Italian rail company Trenord said its network had experienced widespread damage
and breakdowns.
Lombardy’s
fire service received hundreds of calls as strong winds ripped the roofs off
several homes. Giuseppe Sala, the mayor of Milan, said local people endured a
sleepless night as winds exceeded 63mph (100km/h).
On Monday
large hailstones damaged the nose and wings of a Delta Air Lines plane that had
been bound for New York, forcing it to divert to Rome Fiumicino.
Sala said:
“What we are seeing is not normal. We can no longer deny that climate change is
changing our lives. We can no longer turn a blind eye, and above all, we can’t
not do anything.”
The climate
crisis is supercharging extreme weather around the world, leading to more
frequent and more deadly disasters, from heatwaves to floods to wildfires.
Italy’s
civil protection minister, Nello Musumeci, said: “Climate change is not just a
contingency and Italy must realise that it now has a tropical climate. On the
one hand, we are paying the price of climate change, to which we should have
paid more attention several years ago, and, on the other, of infrastructure
that does not seem to be totally adequate for the new context.”
.jpeg)
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário