Officials say at least nine people died as heavy rain slammed parts of France, Italy and Greece, trapping travelers in their cars.
Some roads remained closed Monday on the French Riviera, and rivers are still rising in Italy after the weekend flooding. In parts of western Greece, hundreds of homes were flooded after heavy overnight rainfall.
Greek state television ERT TV said late Monday that two deaths happened in the eastern Aegean Sea islands. On Rhodes, an elderly woman was found dead after her basement room flooded, and on Kos, another woman drowned after going for a swim in the sea during bad weather.
The bodies of two men believed to be tourists were recovered late Sunday and early Monday near the port of Antirio, 155 miles west of the capital, Athens, after their sailboat was caught in the severe weather.
The administration for France’s Var region said four people died, including a couple in their 70s from the perfume capital of Grasse whose car got submerged. Another died after a French rescue boat sank in the Mediterranean and another was found dead in a car.
In northern Italy, a woman was found dead after the Bomida river swept away her car. Rescuers are also searching for possible victims after a landslide caused the collapse of a stretch of an elevated highway near the flooded city of Savona.
A 100-foot section of highway along a viaduct near the flooded Italian coastal city of Savona collapsed Sunday, authorities said. In images carried on Italian television, rescuers could be seen searching the area for possible casualties. News reports said a landslide on a rain-soaked hillside might have triggered the collapse.
Flooding in Turin, a city in northwest Italy, prompted cancellation of a marathon. In France, the Nice airport was briefly closed Saturday. Rivers leading from the Alps to the French Riviera broke their banks, and sirens rang out in resort towns. Images on French media showed cars peeking above inundated streets and waves slamming onto roadsides.
Some 150 people were evacuated from homes in Liguria, Italy’s hilly northwest coastal region. The region struggled with mudslides that blocked several roads, isolating hamlets. In Genoa, the region’s principal city, the charming neighborhood of Boccadasse, a former fishing village with pastel-painted houses, was flooded after the sea rushed over retaining walls and onto the seaside road.
Venice was partially flooded, but the high tide’s level of nearly 4.3 feet in late morning was not unusual for the lagoon city accustomed to the phenomenon of “acqua alta,’’ (high water). That level was nearly two feet lower than the exceptionally high wind-driven tide that devastated the art-rich tourist destination earlier this month. Venetians and visitors walked on strategically placed raised walkways or sloshed in boots through water that quickly receded to mid-calf level, then ankle-level.
In parts of the south, cars churned through water higher than their tires, and several motorists had to be rescued from their vehicles in flooded streets in Reggio Calabria, a city in the southern ‘’toe’’ of the Italian boot-shaped peninsula, RAI state TV said.
In Puglia, the ‘’heel’’ of the peninsula, authorities in the Baroque city of Lecce ordered as a precaution on Sunday the closing of parks and cemeteries for fear that storm-battered trees might crash onto visitors, the Italian news agency ANSA said.
France’s interior minister visited the affected area Sunday, as authorities worked to restore electricity to thousands of homes.
French national weather service Meteo France said the area absorbed the equivalent of two months of average rainfall in 24 hours.
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
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