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THE TOLL FROM flash floods that swept through Italy’s holiday island of Sardinia has risen to 14, regional president Ugo Cappellacci has said today.
On Monday rivers broke their banks and heavy rain and winds smashed cars, flooded homes and brought down bridges on the island. The previous toll stood at nine.
“I believe there are 14 victims… The situation is dramatic,” Cappellacci told news channel SkyTG24.
The port city of Olbia, where most of the victims were concentrated, was completely flooded and hundreds of people were forced to spend the night in temporary shelters and thousands have damaged homes.
Among the dead was an entire family of four Brazilian immigrants who drowned in their basement flat in the town of Arzachena in the northern part of the island.
Two men use an inflatable dingy to gt around in a flooded street in Olbia in northern Sardinia yesterday (AP Photo/Anonio Satta)
Three people from the same family died when a road bridge collapsed onto their van near Olbia, while a mother and daughter were found dead in a car that was swept away in the city, officials said.
Emergency workers were still rescuing people in a mountainous part of the island near Nuoro who climbed onto the roofs of their homes or up trees to escape the rising waters.
Rescuers work in a flooded street in the small town of Uras in Sardinia yesterday (AP Photo/Alessandra Chergia)
In Olbia, hundreds of residents took to Facebook to offer their homes as shelter for the night to those forced out of their houses on a special group entitled: “Let us open our homes to our fellow citizens”.
Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta has called a cabinet meeting for later today to declare a state of emergency on the island and the head of the civil protection agency, Franco Gabrielli, flew to the island to oversee rescue efforts.
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OMG! 14 people died and none of the comments are about them. R.I.P.
Very sad. Hope that lessons can be learnt & the island’s infrastructure improved to better deal with weather like this in future.
What are you talking about? It was a bloody cyclone, what lesson should be learned exactly?
Like putting up a big sign saying no Acts of God allowed
Planning flood relief culverts as one example, however when lax planning laws are allowed, expect incidents like this to become more common.
TheLoneHurler, I’m afraid… until there is a political will to acknowledge climate change nothing will happen….. can you please name a single country in the whole world that has admitted to Climate Change as reported by the scientific community and has started to legiferate?
Pretty much all of the first world countries have admitted Simona, I do recall almost 25c carbon tax being added to my litre of diesel since 2008, already this year another €1.50 per bag of coal.
You see, the delusion is this – paying more and more money for oil is not stopping or hindering consumption, the 25c on my litre of diesel means I have less to spend in my local economy – thus killing jobs.
All the carbon tax money spent has not stopped storms such as this and the Philippines one. Carbon tax is a failed policy. Planning for houses is also a failed policy. The only good thing I have seen is the insulation of houses been done. Energy conservation should be encouraged, not taxing it more.
I could go on and on all day here, but when you have a media ran by government (or people in bed with the government) spinning the climate change yarn you tend to be called a “denier” etc…
Australia will not be attending the shindig in Warsaw “Australia will not support any measures which are socialism masquerading as environmentalism”
Send over Michael D Higgins.he will sort it out
Comment of the week…..
Global warming or should that be global freezing ,going by the forecasts being dished out this morning
‘Global Warming’ doesn’t make everywhere warmer…
It amplifies the extremes due to the seas being a little warmer at a global level.
Basically storms are getting stronger, droughts dryer, Summers hotter and Winters colder depending on where on the globe you are located.
Basically the IPCC [ surprise surprise] does not agree with you.
“Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century … No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin… In summary, confidence in large scale changes in the intensity of extreme extratropical cyclones since 1900 is low.”
Are we organising a collection, or does that only apply when its 3000
They are actually two container ships as I checked on Marine Traffic website as to what is anchored in that bay! So there you have it, red thumb away people who hate be proved wrong!!
@Patrick Kenealy, when they have to google for information ,they should stay quiet :-)
Exactly:)
None of those ships in the top picture are tankers!!
Both are tankers: What do you think they are?
Not tankers, the one on the right has racks on deck and its own heavy crane, possibly a container ship, the other is general cargo.A larger photo would make a definite ID possible.
Google cofferdams, cargo tanks and pumprooms; it is these that are on the decks of both tankers.
The one on the right is the ‘Hansa Freyburg’ ,formerly ‘Maersk Volos’, the other one is possibly ‘Kronoborg’
have your say