Italy's flood-ravaged region still on red alert

ROME

Italy’s northern Emilia-Romagna region, hit by torrential rains earlier this week, is still on red alert for extreme weather as its struggling population tries to recover from the worst floods in about a century.

Heavy rainfall, which came after months of scorching drought, pushed more than 20 rivers out of their banks and caused up to 300 landslides in the highly-populated region, killing at least 14 people and leaving tens of thousands displaced.

Dozens of cities and small towns were pummeled by rivers of mud, forcing people to leave their homes as rescuers kept searching for the missing ones.

In the Ravenna area, a rescue helicopter crashed on Saturday during efforts to fix the local electric grid, wounding at least four people, according to reports.

The heavy death toll and devastation in the area, which includes damage worth billions of dollars in the agricultural and business sectors, has sparked a new political controversy around the response by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government.

The premier, who has called an emergency Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, is now expected to return earlier than planned from the ongoing G-7 meeting in Japan, where world leaders including US President Joe Biden expressed their solidarity and readiness to help Italy.

Over the past few days, environmental experts have highlighted how such extreme weather events are becoming more frequent in Italy, underlining the need for immediate actions.

Civil Protection Minister Nello Musumeci warned earlier this week that Italy has to dramatically rethink its flood protection measures nationwide, stressing that “everything must change” and that the key going forward would be “prevention.”