Three dead as storms batter Italy

(ANSA) - Lucca, March 5 - Torrential rain and high winds lashed Italy Thursday killing three people.
    A 41-year-old man died near the Tuscan city of Lucca when his Ford Focus was hit by a rock that fell off an embankment, sources said Thursday. His female passenger was unharmed. In the Marche city of Urbino, a woman was crushed to death by a tree uprooted by strong winds. She had just stepped off a bus and was walking to work when the incident took place, sources said.
    Also in Urbino, a 70-year-old man and a civil protection worker were injured by falling branches.
    A 76-year-old man died after strong winds blew him into the path of a van while he was riding a bicycle in Buscate, near Milan.
    A tree was blown onto a cable car in the Alps but its 200 occupants were unhurt and eventually evacuated from their cabins, in difficult conditions.
    In the Ligurian coastal capital of Genoa a ship broke loose from its moorings as a result of strong winds, which fanned a vast forest fire in Imperia province that has devoured 20 hectares of trees and is encroaching on Savona province.
    Two firefighting planes are battling the blaze, which is 500 meters across. In Tuscany authorities shut down parts of the E45 motorway and the Aurelia state road. In the northern Tuscan city of Prato, strong winds brought down a portion of the city's historic defensive walls, while two fire fighters were injured - neither of them critically - when strong winds toppled a cement pole overnight near Florence.
    Also in northern Tuscany, winds reaching 159km/h uprooted 200 trees surrounding the Mugello race track, where it also damaged some of the circuit equipment. Schools will be closed Friday and Saturday in the Abruzzo city of Pescara, on the Adriatic coast, while snow and heavy winds at higher altitudes caused a massive pile-up on the A24 highway at the Gran Sasso Mountain tunnel. In the Marche region, the Ete river has overflowed its banks and schools have been shut down in the towns of Amandola and Servigliano.
    Electricity was cut off in some 13,000 homes in the central Umbria region as heavy rains and 80km/h winds swept through the central land-locked region, uprooting trees and blowing roofs off buildings, the civil protection agency said. In Lazio, uprooted trees and flooding caused disruption to traffic in several parts of Rome and a meeting between regional governors and newly elected President Sergio Mattarella had to be postponed due to the difficulty for some participants of reaching the capital.