Nine dead after flooding hits Italy’s Marche region

“All citizens are ordered to not leave their homes and go to higher floors,” one hard-hit town wrote in an all-caps bulletin on Facebook as the high water surged.

A drought in Italy’s risotto heartland is killing the rice

While Italy has had deadlier floods over the decades, the event marked yet another example of extreme weather, following a record drought that had sapped lakes and rivers and devastated crops. Fabrizio Curcio, the head of Italy’s civil protection department, said the flooded area over a matter of hours saw “about one-third of the rainfall you’d usually get in a year.”

“There were moments of terror with truly extraordinary levels of water,” Curcio said.

A spokesman for the civil protection department said the area had been hit with 400 millimeters, or about 15.75 inches, of rain.

While it is difficult to connect any single event to climate change, experts say moments of extreme weather are becoming more common — including in Italy, which has seen melting Alpine glaciers, summer wildfires and rising seas that are chipping away at coastal cities.

In a visit to the flooded region, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said flooding risks had become an “emergency with climate change” and would require steps for prevention, including infrastructure investment.

“It also means tackling climate change,” Draghi said.

The flooding Friday stretched across the Marche region, from the inland hills to the Adriatic coast. Some mayors of the hard-hit towns noted that there had been no indication that such an extreme event might be coming.

“[There was] only a yellow alert from the civil protection for wind and rain,” Maurizio Greci, the mayor of Sassoferrato, told Italian radio. “Nothing could foretell such a disaster.”

Venice submerged by highest tides in half a century

In a news release, government authorities said that among the nine dead, two people had yet to be identified and could be among the four people who were officially missing.

Photos from Friday showed people beginning the cleanup work, trudging through mud, holding shovels, drying off belongings.

The head of the Marche region, Francesco Acquaroli, wrote on his verified Facebook page that he’d spoken with Italian President Sergio Mattarella as well as Draghi, who offered support for “every necessary need.”

“The pain over what happened is deep,” Acquaroli wrote.