Italy: Lake Como towns hit by extreme weather

Italy: Lake Como towns hit by extreme weather

SeattlePI.com

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MILAN (AP) — Towns around Italy's Lake Como were hit by mudslides and floods on Tuesday in another example of extreme weather phenomena that an agricultural lobby said had intensified in recent years.

Italian firefighters carried out more than 60 rescues after storms wreaked havoc around the picturesque lake ringed by mountains in northern Italy. They included bringing to safety an elderly woman blocked in her home, as well as a person with a disability and a caregiver isolated by a landslide. No deaths or injuries were reported.

In Brienno, on the lake's western shore and the hardest hit town, 50 residents were blocked in their home when a landslide caused a gas leak. And further south in Cernobbio, firefighters evacuated a condominium threatened with flooding.

“We are facing in Italy the consequences of climate change, with a trend toward tropicalization and the multiplication of extreme events,’’ Coldiretti said, citing more frequent, sudden and violent storms, short and intense rainfalls and rapids changes from sunny skies to storms.

Coldiretti estimates 14 billion euros ($16.5 billion) of damage over the last decade to agriculture production, buildings and infrastructure because of climate change-provoked events like flooding and landslides.

The storms devastating Lake Como come a day after hailstones the size of tennis balls damaged nearly 100 cars and stalled traffic on a highway near Bologna, in northern Italy. Video showed cars with windshields shattered by the hailstones pulled over on the side of a highway as stunned drivers and passengers surveyed the damage.

While hailstorms are a common summer feature in Italy’s Po River Valley, meteorologist Luca Lombroso told the Bologna daily, il Resto di Carlino, that the strength and frequency of hailstorms this...

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