A sudden rise in waters, caused by heavy rains, left a dead on North West Italy on Monday, announced the authorities, stressing that extreme weather phenomena became more and more frequent.
The 70 -year -old man was swept away by a torrent of water and mud after getting out of his van in the Alpine city of Bardonecchia, in the Piedmont region, located near the French border.
“We are increasingly confronted with emergency situations due to weather phenomena that we once called exceptional, but which are today increasingly frequent,” said the president of the region, Alberto Cirio, on social networks. “Today, a bomb of water suddenly struck the city of Bardonecchia, causing damage and unfortunately doing a victim,” he said.
In the afternoon, the mayor of the city advised the inhabitants not to leave their home and not to approach the bridges, because the sudden bad weather had brought the river out of the Fréjus from his bed. Video images have shown black waters rushing into the channel, projecting plumes of water and mud on the banks.
Local media identified the victim as a septuagenarian residing in Bardonecchia, a popular tourist destination that hosted snowboard events during the 2006 winter Olympic Games in Turin. The firefighters rescued at least 10 people trapped by the waters, as well as several other people stuck in their car, the media reported.
This catastrophe occurred almost two years after an episode similar to Bardonecchia, where heavy rains had overflowed two rivers, including the Fréjus, causing a large mud flow which had taken away cars and debris. The 2023 disaster had not made any victims.
The heavy rains that fell on the northwest of the country occurred while intense heat wave fell on a large part of Europe. According to the IPCC, the group of experts mandated by the UN on the climate, each additional degree of warming is equivalent to a 7 % increase in precipitation during storms and thunderstorms.
