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Italy’s Emilia Romagna region will recover from devastating floods this week by learning from the 2012 earthquake, its governor said on Friday, as the death toll from the disaster rose to 14.
“If there’s a lesson we’ve learned from the earthquake, it’s that emergencies require rapid and rapid reconstruction,” said Stefano Bonaccini.
“Nothing will stop,” the governor told reporters, referring to business, tourism and other activities in the wealthy northern region.
Reuters video footage from the city of Lugo in Emilia-Romagna showed cars submerged in water and houses flooded, as some residents rode bicycles or walked through flooded streets.
More than 15,000 people have been forced to leave their homes due to flooding and hundreds of landslides, and many are trapped in their homes with no electricity and little food supplies. Some of the evacuated flood victims are staying at the national museum, where volunteers provide mattresses to sleep on.
Thousands of people were evacuated from the northern Italian region of Emilia Romagna after heavy rains caused severe flooding. At least eight people were killed.
“I’m very happy here … But I feel bad,” Gabriella Valenti, 74, told Reuters. “I’m one of the luckiest … I still have a house but someone lost everything. They don’t know what to do to make us feel good.”
Bonaccini, who is due to meet with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Tuesday to discuss reconstruction efforts, said around 500 roads have been damaged or destroyed.
The floods are the latest in a series of extreme weather events that have hit Italy in the past year, as extraordinary disasters have become routine.
The same region in Emilia-Romagna was hit by extreme weather in early May, with at least two people killed during the storm.
The torrential rains followed months of drought that had parched the land, reducing its water-absorbing capacity, meteorologists said.
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