Five die in Italian floods as rains leave trail of destruction

FIVE people died and two others were reported missing as flash floods hit southern Italy, sweeping away bridges, cutting roads and derailing a high-speed train, officials said.

Heavy rains caused the derailment of a high-speed train, injuring at least 25 passengers, authorities said.

Most suffered only minor injuries when six of the train’s carriages slid off the rails, but six people were being treated in hospital for fractures. The early morning train was travelling from Taranto to Milan.

State railway company Trenitalia said the rains in the Bari area were of such intensity that they eroded the ground under the tracks. Train services have been interrupted along the Adriatic coast.

In the worst incident, three people were killed and two others missing after a bridge collapsed, sweeping their vehicle into a rain-swollen river in Puglia, the civil protection organisation told AFP.

“Seven people were on board the same vehicle when the bridge collapsed, two people managed to get themselves out, but three others died and two are missing,” a spokesman said.

“Frogmen and emergency services staff are searching for the two, but unfortunately I think they will be found dead,” said Italy’s civil protection chief Guido Bertolaso. Bertolaso also sharply criticised local authorities for alleged negligence in their administration of the area.

“We are once again confronted with a tragedy caused by negligent management of the region and a desire to build on sites where major floods may occur, even if only as rarely as once a century,” he told journalists.

In a separate incident, a 24-year-old man died when his car was swept off the road by floodwaters. Two others inside the car managed to free themselves. His body was later recovered from the sea.

“In three hours last night we had 161 millimetres (6.3 inches) of rain in one restricted area, more rain than Puglia gets in an entire year,” Bertolaso reported after flying over the affected area.

All three incidents occurred near Bari, the regional capital of Puglia. Main roads in the region were cut by floodwaters, and at least one other bridge was reported to have collapsed.

The weather was being caused by very localised storms which are very intense and difficult to predict, the civil protection organisation said.

As the situation began to return to normal in the south, storms began to hit the Ligurian coast in the northwest. Torrential rain caused flooding and landslides along the Ligurian coast, where emergency services reported that floodwaters had submerged some homes up to their first floor windows.