Bad weather in the Centre-North: two victims, flooding and damage in various regions

Flooded roads, underpasses and subways, flooded rivers, overturned cars, severe slowdowns in railway traffic, torn roofs, 63 thousand lightning strikes in Tuscany alone and also, unfortunately, two victims: the bad weather has arrived in the Centre-North with the fury feared and predicted for days by meteorologists and the damage count is only just beginning.

The most serious accidents occurred one in Latisana (Udine) and the other in the Siena area. In the first, an 83-year-old woman, Antonietta Zamarian, took an underpass despite it being completely flooded by the very heavy rainfall that had been ongoing for hours: the elderly woman drowned in the passenger compartment of her car. To save her, two policemen immersed themselves in the water and, after several attempts, managed to extract her from the car but the woman died shortly afterwards. The two soldiers were taken to hospital, they are not in danger. The other fatal accident occurred in Sinalunga, in the Siena area, hit by a tornado.

An elderly woman, who was in her home, went to close a window but the strong wind broke the glass and a splinter severed her saphenous vein; the woman bled to death at home. Also in Sinalunga, the tornado damaged the sports hall, some companies in the artisan area and the roofs of 40 private homes.

Things went better in San Michele al Tagliamento (Venice), where firefighters managed to save a pregnant woman who was stuck inside her car due to heavy rain. The bad weather also caused, among other things, the flooding of the Tagliamento river, just as the Lavagna stream in Calvari (Genoa) in the Fontanabuona valley flooded for the second time in two consecutive days. Precisely due to the flooding of the stream, the second stage of the 50th edition of the Giro della Lunigiana international cycling race was suspended. During the night the Lambro also flooded, then returned to its bed.

In Cassino, in the Frosinone area, two students from the Faculty of Engineering were trapped and injured by the collapse of a large poplar tree located right in front of the university entrance.

In Rome, however, a tree fell on a car in via Ardeatina; the driver was extracted and transported to hospital under code red. Two large pine trees, one in Rome and the other in Velletri, in the metropolitan city, were struck by lightning, while a large branch fell on a car belonging to the police, who remained unharmed and were engaged in constant surveillance under the house of the president of the Senate, Ignazio La Russa. Also in Rome, several motorists were rescued by firefighters because they were trapped in their cars by water.

In Milan it is raining in the central atrium of the Palace of Justice, which overlooks the building's famous staircase: a portion of the roof of the building, designed by architect Mario Piacentini, could not withstand the pouring rain. Flooding also occurred in some parts of the Civil Hospitals of Brescia: the water entered the Cardiac Resuscitation Department, small floods were also recorded in other departments of the hospital but the most significant problem concerned the reception area.

The wave of bad weather also hit hard on the island of Elba where inconveniences, flooding and landslides were reported. A very violent disturbance brought Portoferraio to its knees in twenty minutes.

In the Livorno area, in Cecina, over 80 mm of rain fell in less than two hours, in Grosseto 115 mm fell in 12 hours; over 30 millimeters of rain, with peaks of 36.8 millimetres, fell over three hours in Florence. In Reggello, in the Florentine area, due to water infiltrations in a building, the precautionary evacuation of a building was ordered; over 63,000 lightning strikes have been recorded in Tuscany in the last 12 hours. The weather will be unstable tomorrow, the sun should return at the weekend.