Devastating floods in Italy leave 13 dead and 20,000 homeless

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Older and disabled individuals were stranded in their houses as rescuers worked through the night to save people in the worst floods to hit Italy in 100 years.

The floodwaters in northern Emilia-Romagna have killed 13 people, with many more still missing as of Thursday morning. An estimated 20,000 people have been displaced as a result of the calamity, which has caused 23 rivers to burst their banks and 280 landslides to envelop 41 cities and towns.

An elderly couple trapped inside their home in Cava, a hamlet in the province of Forl-Cesena, was among the deceased. "We heard their cries for help," a neighbor told the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero. "We tried to get them out, but it was useless."

Firefighters conducted 2,000 rescue operations around the region and in flood-affected areas of central Marche.

Forty elderly individuals were rescued from a nursing home overnight after police received many pleas for assistance. 

It is worth noting that helicopters rescued elderly people who took cover on roofs.

My beloved city #Bologna and #EmiliaRomagna region is for the second day under the rain and the flood. It’s the third time that this happens in 2023 alone.

As the extreme events caused by global warming increase, similar phenomena will become more frequent & intense.

Hold on! pic.twitter.com/amsco156Jc

— Francesco Salesio Schiavi (@frencio_schiavi) May 17, 2023

Stefano Bonaccini, the president of Emilia-Romagna, equaled the devastation to the earthquake that struck the region in 2012 in which 28 people died. “The damage will be quantitatively smaller, but it will be a few billion euros,” he told Rai 3. “We will rebuild everything as we did for the earthquake,” he said.

Prior to the recent floods, Emilia-Romagna and other northern Italian regions were plagued by a drought that dried up the terrain, limiting its ability to absorb water.

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