As the rain stopped, rescue crews scrambled through mud and around fallen trees to search for survivors. Some people had taken refuge on roofs or held on to branches amid the flood. Italian media reported several devastating accounts, including a mother and daughter who were believed to have been swept away while getting out of their car. “All citizens are ordered not to leave their homes and go to higher floors,” one hard-hit city wrote in an open-ended Facebook bulletin as overflow water rose. A drought in Italy’s risotto heartland is killing rice While Italy has seen more deadly floods in decades, the event marked yet another example of extreme weather, following a record drought that had destroyed lakes and rivers and damaged crops. Fabrizio Curcio, head of Italy’s civil protection department, said the flooded area in a matter of hours saw “about a third of the rainfall you would normally get in a year”. “There were some scary moments with really unusual water levels,” Curcio said. A spokesman for the civil protection department said the area was hit with 400 millimeters, or about 15.75 inches, of rain. While it’s hard to link a single event to climate change, experts say moments of extreme weather are becoming more common – including in Italy, which has seen everything from melting Alpine glaciers to summer wildfires to rising seas destroying coastal cities. Friday’s floods spread across the Marche region, from the inland hills to the Adriatic coast. Some mayors of hard-hit cities noted that there were no signs that such an extreme event might be coming. “[There was] only a yellow alert from civil protection for wind and rain,” Maurizio Greci, mayor of Sassoferrato, told Italian radio. “Nothing could have predicted such a disaster.” Venice was submerged by the highest tides in half a century In a press release, government authorities said that among the nine dead, two people have not yet been identified and may be among the four people who are officially missing. Photos from Friday showed people beginning cleanup operations, running through mud, holding shovels, drying their belongings. The head of the Marche region, Francesco Acquaroli, wrote on his verified Facebook page that he had spoken with Italian President Sergio Mattarella as well as the country’s prime minister, Mario Draghi, who offered support for “every necessary need”. “The pain of what happened is deep,” Acquaroli wrote.
