The Italian city of Milan woke up this Tuesday with water up to its neck.
ADVERTISEMENTThe heavy rains that accompanied a violent storm overflowed the Seveso River at dawn, causing extreme flooding in the north of the town, with cars swept down the streets. No victims have been reported in the region.
Local authorities are working to adapt to extreme weather by building more detention basins to retain part of the water volume of flooding rivers. However, the basins need work, Marco Granelli is Milan's municipality security counsellor and he says, "We have not had such big flooding since 2014, this means we have to work on the basins, Milan’s one is ready, we are testing the pumps and it will enter into action in November, but the rest of the Lombardy region is lacking detention basins.”
Other northern Italian towns reported floods and rainstorms, including Parma, Piacenza, and areas outside Genova.
Five regions are on orange alert, the second alert level, and at least one, Veneto, is on red alert. Venice is seeing the "acqua alta" phenomenon, which floods the city's canals.
Meteorologists predict that the situation will improve throughout the day. The storm will move towards the centre and south of the country where there is an unusually hot autumn: on Tuesday, Palermo recorded 34 degrees Celsius and Rome 28.