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Tourists walk in the flooded Venice landmark St. Mark's Square (San Mark Square) during a high-water (Acqua Alta) alert on October 29, 2018, in Venice as the city is inundated by near-record flooding and ferocious storms. AFP
CASTELDACCIA, Italy – Floods killed 12 people on the island of Sicily, including nine members of a single family, pushing Italy's weekend-long storm toll beyond 30, rescuers said Sunday.
After a river burst its banks, the bodies of the family of children aged one, and 15 were discovered in the coastal town of Casteldaccia east of the capital Palermo.
Rescue services said the house where they were spending the weekend was submerged in water and mud. The other victims' ages ranged from 32 to 65.
One Agi news agency reported.
"I lost everything, just my daughter," one of the survivors, 35-year-old Giuseppe Giordano, told journalists.
His wife, two other children, his parents, brother, and sister, his nephew and the boy's grandmother all died, he said.
After flying over Casteldaccia on Sunday, Sicilian prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio described scenes of "total disaster".
Officials have opened an investigation to determine whether or not they have complied with safety norms.
In a separate incident in Sicily, a 44-year-old was found dead in Vicari, also in the Palermo region.
He had been trying to reach a service station, where he was the manager, to help a colleague trapped there. A 20-year-old pbadenger is still missing.
Rescue workers are also looking for a doctor, 40, forced by the storms to leave the door to work.
Two other people, a man and a woman, died in the region of Agrigento, rescuers said.
Italy, especially in the north. Violent winds and strong rain
Two were reported killed on Friday, a 62-year-old Germany struck by lightning in Sardinia.
Six regions remain on high alert for storms.
The severe weather has caused mbadive damage and disruption. Trees in sprawling mountainside forests in the northeast of the country were flattened like matchsticks by violent winds.
"It's like after an earthquake," said the governor of the Veneto region, Luca Zaia. "Thousands of acres of forest are razed to the ground, as if by a giant electric saw."
On Sunday, after flying over the area with Italy's Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, Zaia said the storms destroyed 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres) of pine forest in all.
Salvini posted photos of the devastation in a series of tweets Sunday after flying over the Alpine town of Belluno.
"We need 40 billion euros ($ 45.5 billion) to secure the national territory," he said.
He pledged to collect and spend that sum of money, in a barbed aside to the European Union, said he hoped for his plans overseeing Brussels.
Europe has objected to Italy's proposed budget, which it says will worsen the country's already huge deficit.
The cbad city of Venice, on Italy's northeast coast, has some of its worst flooding ever, and withstood winds of up to 180 kilometers an hour (110 miles an hour).
The picturesque fishing village of Portofino near Genoa, a holiday resort on the Italian Riviera, was reachable only by sea after the main road collapsed.
Floods in Sicily have closed many roads this week, and mayors ordered schools, public parks and underpbades shut.
On Sunday, troops were deployed to the main roads on the Mediterranean island.
Italy's civil protection agency has described the weather as one of the most complex meteorological situations of the past 50 to 60 years. / cbb
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