18 dead and hundreds homeless after Sardinia swept by cyclone

State of emergency declared on Mediterranean island hit by flash floods

Tue, Nov 19, 2013, 17:35

A cyclone killed 18 people and made hundreds homeless as extreme rainfall flooded eastern parts of the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, Italian authorities said today.

The government declared a state of emergency after Cyclone Cleopatra dropped 450mm of rain in an hour and a half overnight, causing rivers to burst their banks, sweeping away cars and flooding homes across the island.

“This is a national tragedy,” prime minister Enrico Letta said.

Bad weather on the island was forecast to continue today, before clearing up on Wednesday.

The declaration of a state of emergency will allow resources to be freed up more quickly to reach devastated areas, with swathes of the island under muddy flood waters that covered cars and swamped houses, displacing 2,700 according to authorities.

The mayor of Olbia, the northeastern Sardinian town among the worst-affected areas, said the sudden flooding had burst “like a bomb” with the same amount of water falling in 90 minutes as falls in the city of Milan in six months.

Mayor Gianni Giovannelli said houses across the area had been left half-submerged by the floods and rescuers were still searching for possible victims. “We’ve just found a dead child we had been searching all night for,” he told SkyTG24 television.

Residents told of narrow escapes as sudden floods of water surged into their houses. “We managed to open the door with all this water inside, it was just devastating. The kids didn’t have anything, they were naked, naked, they managed to get out by the back stairs,” Olbia resident Francesco Brandano said. “Everything is wet, everything needs to be thrown away. Everything is gone, documents, everything. We haven’t got anything left.”

FULL STORY: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/18-dead-and-hundreds-ho...