Global Courant 2023-05-21 03:43:31
ROME
Italy’s northern Emilia-Romagna region, hit by heavy rains earlier this week, is still on red alert for extreme weather conditions as its struggling population struggles to recover from the worst floods in nearly a century.
After months of scorching drought, heavy rainfall has washed more than 20 rivers off their banks and caused as many as 300 landslides in the densely populated region, killing at least 14 people and displacing tens of thousands.
As rescuers continued their search for missing persons, dozens of cities and small towns were overwhelmed by rivers of mud, forcing people to flee their homes.
In the Ravenna area, a rescue helicopter crashed on Saturday during efforts to repair the local power grid, injuring at least four people, according to reports.
The heavy death toll and devastation in the region, including billions of dollars in damage to the agriculture and trade sectors, has sparked a new political debate around the reaction of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government.
The prime minister, who called an emergency meeting of the cabinet on Tuesday, is expected to return earlier than planned from the ongoing G-7 meeting in Japan, where world leaders, including US President Joe Biden, expressed their solidarity and readiness to help Italy.
In the past few days, environmental experts have highlighted how such extreme weather events have become more frequent in Italy, underlining the need for urgent measures.
Civil Protection Minister Nello Musumeci warned earlier this week that Italy needs to dramatically rethink its nationwide flood protection measures, stressing that “everything has to change” and that the key forward will be “prevention”.
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