At least five dead in a storm in Italy; historic water rise in Venice

The wave of bad weather that affects all of Italy, since Sunday, October 28, has killed at least five people on Monday. Much of Italy is on high alert due to the combination of high winds, heavy rainfall and high tides.

Among the victims, two people died when a tree fell on their vehicle not far from Rome and another man died in the same way in Terracina, on the coast south of Rome. A young man was also killed by the fall of a tree in the street in the Naples area, according to the authorities, while an elderly person died after the fall of a piece of cornice in the North-West, near Savona.

In Venice, theacqua alta (high water) reached in the early afternoon a peak of 156 cm, a level for which wooden bridges usually arranged to allow to circulate in the dry in case of flood are no longer safe. This is the 6^e times in the recent history of the city that theacqua alta exceeds 150 cm.
St. Mark's Square remained inaccessible for a few hours and many tourists had to make their way through the surrounding streets, children on their shoulders and water up to the thighs. On Sunday, the flood forced the city to change the route of the marathon, a portion of which still ran in the water.

Part of Italy on red alert

Beyond Venice, almost all of Italy was on the alert, red in the north (Liguria, Lombardy, Veneto, Friuli, Trentino) and Abruzzo (center), orange over much of the rest of the peninsula, and Sicily. All the schools of Veneto were closed, as well as those of Rome, Genoa (north-west), Messina (Sicily) and many municipalities of Piedmont and Tuscany.

In the north-east, wind gusts up to 100 km / h on the coast and 150 km / h in the mountains were expected in the evening, with a total of precipitation in a few days equivalent to the rainfall of several months. Some mountainous areas in northern Veneto have already surpbaded the cumulative rainfall of 400 mm since Saturday, and meteorological services expect heavy rainfall.

"We are worried because the situation is badogous, if not worse, to the one that Veneto has experienced [lors de fortes inondations] in 1966 and in 2010. The grounds are already saturated with water, the rivers are big and because of the sirocco, the sea does not absorb »commented Luca Zaia, president of the Veneto region. Across the country, firefighters had to conduct hundreds of interventions.