In Pianello di Ostra, in the Ancona region of Italy, residents are scrambling to clean up their homes and businesses.
Thursday’s heavy rains turned into a ‘tsunami’ that hit the region, leaving at least 10 dead and dozens injured. Three people are still missing.
Residents say they are unprepared for this phenomenon.
“We live on the first floor and from the terrace we saw this sudden amount of water that rose from 50 cm to 1.4 meters in less than 10 minutes”, says Gabriele, a resident of Pianello di Ostra.
“When we arrived in the morning the situation inside the house was really dramatic, it is no longer habitable, we threw away everything that was inside and I don’t know if and when it will be possible to return to live here,” Aurora, another resident, confesses.
These types of floods, which are happening more and more across Europe, have turned climate change into an election campaign issue in Italy.
“The affected residents talk about the need to rebuild the safety of the environment, without the safety of the environment there is no way for them to stay and live here and now they want to leave. So, to deal with the hydrogeological problem means to deal with the infrastructure problem, it means to invest, but above all it means to deal with climate change”, said outgoing Prime Minister Mario Draghi.
In Cantiano, the most affected town, 420 mm of rain fell in just a few hours, equal to the amount of rain that fell in the city in 2021.