Firefighters in the seaside town of Santa Marinella near Rome on Thursday rescued some 50 people who took refuge on roofs or got trapped in their cars after torrential rainfall caused two creeks to burst their banks, flooding the streets with a meter of water.
Five teams are on site with two amphibious vehicles, firefighters said.
Train services on the FL5 rail line were suspended due to flooding on the tracks between Santa Marinella and the town of Santa Severa.
In the area around the coastal Tuscan city of Grosseto, firefighters rescued eight people trapped on farms after the Alma torrent burst its banks near the village of Pian D'Alma. They include a postal employee who was rescued after being trapped in her company car while on the job.
The seaside resort of Punta Ala was cut off after a violent hailstorm flooded the access road, filling it with mud, while in the town of Follonica, an entire neighborhood was reportedly transformed into a lake. In the Liguria region - where a mudslide claimed the lives of an elderly couple earlier this month - authorities have called a Level 2 weather alert as of 9pm tonight through 6pm Friday.
This means schools, public parks, and cemeteries will shut down in the northwestern region where torrential rainfall and mudslides two weeks ago caused an estimated 30 million euros in damages to agriculture alone.
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