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Cantiano (AP):
Flash floods ripped through several towns in the hills of central Italy on Friday after hours of torrential rain, killing 10 people and leaving at least four missing. Dozens of survivors climbed onto roofs or into trees to wait for rescue.
Floods hit the garage and basement and knocked down doors. In one town, strong currents pushed a car onto a second-floor balcony, while vehicles parked elsewhere were huddled in the street. Some farmland near the sea is several meters (yards) underwater.
“It’s not a water bomb, it’s a tsunami,” Riccardo Pasqualini, the mayor of Barbara, told Italian state radio after a sudden downpour devastated his Adriatic town on Thursday night. Small town in the Marche region near the sea.
He said overnight flooding left the town’s 1,300 residents without drinking water. A mother and her young daughter went missing after trying to escape floodwaters, Pasqualini told Italy’s ANSA news agency. Elsewhere in town, a boy was swept from his mother’s arms, and her mother was rescued.
Flash floods killed 10 people and left four missing, Prime Minister Mario Draghi told a news conference in Rome. He thanked the rescuers for their “professionalism, dedication and courage”. About 50 people were treated in hospital for their injuries, officials said.
Draghi, who is a caretaker ahead of Italy’s Sept. 25 national election, plans to visit some of the devastated towns later on Friday, where his government announced 5 million euros (dollars) in aid.
“This is an extreme event, not just a special event,” climatologist Massimiliano Fazzini told Italian state television. He said that, according to his calculations, the rainfall was concentrated in four hours, including a particularly large 15-minute period, the most in hundreds of years.
In just a few hours, the area was inundated with the amount of rain it normally receives in six months, state television said. A summer with little rain means the slopes are unusually hard and dry, so water runs down the slopes faster, increasing its impact.
Dozens of people who were trapped in cars or climbed on roofs or trees to avoid rising floodwaters have been rescued, the fire department said on Twitter. Police in the town of Sasoferrato, unable to reach a man trapped in a car, reached out to him with a long branch and pulled him to safety.
Helicopter crews rescued seven people in remote town in the Apennine Mountains.
Hundreds of firefighters struggled to clear fallen tree trunks and branches in the thick mud on Friday as they searched for people who may have been buried by debris. They waded waist-high water on flooded streets, while others paddled with lifeguards in rubber dinghies.
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