Three people were killed and one
missing as storms battered Italy on Sunday and Monday, leading
Venice vaporetto services to be suspended as a big 'acqua alta'
hit the lagoon city, submerging three quarters of the historic
centre.
Two people were killed when a tree hit a car they were
travelling in near Frosinone south of Rome.
The pair were killed when high winds felled the tree at
Castrocielo, the Red Cross told the civil protection department.
A 21-year-old man from a town near Caserta was killed by a
tree felled by high winds in Naples.
The man was walking in Via Claudio, in the Fuorigrotta
district of the southern Italian city.
He was rushed to hospital but died there.
A Turkish website manager was missing after a storm-tossed
sailboat was smashed against a pier in Calabria on Sunday.
He was the owner of the Canadian-flagged vessel, from which
others may be missing.
Six regions are on red alert due to the wave of storms,
torrential rain and gales that is battering Italy.
The regions on maximum alert are Lombardy, Veneto,
Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Liguria, Trentino-Alto Adige and Abruzzo,
with gusts of wind reaching 100km/h in some cases.
Schools in many cities, including Rome, were closed on Monday
due to the extreme weather.
Rome's civil protection office on Monday told residents to
restrict their movements to the strictly indispensable because
of bad weather.
They said this was due to the probable worsening of
conditions over the coming hours and the need to allow rescue
vehicles to travel freely.
Falling trees and branches injured two people in Milan,
destroyed a car in Rome and caused disruption to the B line of
the Rome metro and rail links to the Roman seaside district of
Ostia.
The highway and railway at the Brenner Pass have reopened
after being closed late on Sunday due to a landslide in the area
of the Italian-Austrian border.
Vehicles on the Milan-Bologna A1 highway had to be escorted
due to flooding.
Ground-floor shops and homes in the centre of the Ligurian
town of Levanto were evacuated.
Winds of up to 130 km/h are whipping across Liguria and a
swell of the River Magra is expected between Vezzano Ligure and
Arcola as storms continue to hit the region.
The scenic Cinque Terre was being lashed by heavy rain and
high winds.
A road collapsed due to heavy rains at Ovaro in Friuli on
Monday.
Rain is continuing to lash the northeastern Italian region.
The Civil Protection Department said the foul weather is
expected to peak on Monday afternoon in southern and central
Italy, although there will also be big storms in the north.
At the weekend a businessman and three workers were killed in
a landslide while doing emergency work on a sewer system in the
Crotone area after bad weather there.
The first big high water of
the autumn hit Venice Monday and sirens blared across the lagoon
city as the 'acqua alta' passed the 110 cm above sea level mark
at which citizens are alerted to the phenomenon.
The water level was measured at 156 cm above sea level, with
some 75% of the centre under water, local officials said.
The high water level halted vaporetto services.
Links to the lagoon islands are the only ones still being
run, while buses are also running.
The rail service between Venice and the mainland is also
running regularly.
The last vaporetti picked up stranded passengers.
Levels of 100-120 cm above sea level are fairly common
in the lagoon city and Venice is well-equipped to cope with
its rafts of pontoon walkways.
But anything much above 120cm risks swamping the city
and washing the walkways away.
The high-water threat has been increasing in recent
years as heavier rains have hit northern Italy, weather
experts say.
Scientists have conceived various ways of warding off
the waters since a dramatic 1966 flood, and a system of
moveable flood barriers called MOSE is being installed after
years of rows.
Experts say there are three main reasons for high water
in the city: the rising floor in the lagoon caused by
incoming silt; the undermining of the islands by the
extraction of methane gas in the sea off Venice; and the
overall increase in sea levels caused by global warming.
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