Global Courant
Car and train traffic has also been disrupted by a fire near Palermo airport, while trees fall and buildings are damaged in Milan.
A wildfire has closed Palermo’s airport in Sicily and storms have claimed the lives of at least two people in northern Italy, as extreme weather ravages the entire country.
The airport in the Sicilian capital was closed for several hours until 11 a.m. (09:00 GMT) on Tuesday as firefighters extinguished a nearby fire that also disrupted road and rail traffic.
The incident added to Sicily’s travel woes at the height of the tourist season.
The island’s main airport, Catania, Italy’s fifth largest, was closed last week due to a fire at a terminal building and has only reopened for a few flights.
A heat wave has hit southern Europe with scorching temperatures bringing an increased risk of fires and deaths.
In some parts of eastern Sicily, temperatures rose to 47.6 degrees Celsius (117.7 degrees Fahrenheit) on Monday, close to a record high of 48.8 degrees Celsius (119.8 degrees Fahrenheit) set on the island two years ago.
On Tuesday, Italy put 16 cities on red because of the high temperatures.
They include Palermo and Catania, where power and water supplies have been regularly cut in recent days, which local officials attributed in part to the heat.
To the north, an overnight storm in Milan ripped off roofs and uprooted trees, blocking roads and disrupting transportation in Italy’s financial capital.
People inspect the damage after thunderstorms and torrential rain in Milan (Claudia Greco/Reuters)
Transport authorities reported serious damage to the city’s power grid, while the Agence France-Presse news agency reported that the water in the historic center had been temporarily shut off.
In the northern province of Monza, a woman was killed on Monday when she was crushed by a falling tree.
A 16-year-old girl in a scout camp died on Tuesday near the city of Brescia when a tree fell on her tent, according to Italian news agencies.
Firefighters evacuated the other members of the camp and took them to a nearby sports hall, the ANSA news agency said.
A Delta flight that had taken off from Milan’s Malpensa Airport and was bound for New York was severely damaged by a hail storm on Monday and was forced to land in Rome.
Italy is one of the European countries hardest hit by climate change and was hit by deadly floods in May.
