Two days after the floods in Italy, the helpers are still finding dead: the number has now risen to 14. At the same time, people are returning to their homes and the clean-up work is underway.
They are images that give hope: Helpers are standing on a muddy street in the city of Cesena, holding brooms, wearing dirty clothes – and they are singing. The song Romagna Mia is about the longing for home Emilia-Romagna, the Italian region that has been hardest hit by the recent storms.
“There are a lot of people asking for help cleaning up. They heard that many young people want to help,” says a helper in Cesena about the clean-up work. And there is enough to do here. A woman in Cesena reports on the situation at home: “We have no electricity or gas, the water is one and a half or two meters high. But the important thing is that we are alive.”
Damages amounting to several billion euros
Not far from Cesena is Faenza. The water was several meters high in the city. In the morning, the police found the body of a man in his 70s.
During the night on Wednesday there was heavy rainfall, especially in the Emilia-Romagna region, sometimes several hundred millimeters of rain fell there in a short time. The result: rivers burst their banks and hundreds of landslides occurred. Videos from the region show houses standing under water up to the roof.
The balance of the storm is dramatic: more than 20,000 people had to leave their homes, the damage in the region probably amounts to several billion euros, the highest level of the storm warning is still valid.
Italian government announces emergency aid
The city of Ravenna, which is popular with holidaymakers, was also affected by the storms. “We were able to rescue several dozen people and also used helicopters. First we rescued two children from a rubber dinghy, then their mother,” reports Francesco Cimmino, director of the region’s coast guard.
The Italian government has meanwhile announced that it will react: next Tuesday it wants to adopt a decree with emergency measures, including emergency aid of 20 million euros for Emilia-Romagna.
The Coldiretti Farmers’ Association reports that thousands of farms are under water. According to the association, tens of thousands of hectares of fruit trees, vineyards and crops have been flooded. Animals also drowned in the floods, and the supply of food for the remaining animals could not be guaranteed.
The exact extent of the destruction in the region will only become clear little by little.