MILAN: Italy’s Emilia Romagna region will recover from the devastating floods that hit this week by taking from lessons learned from the 2012 earthquake, its governor said on Friday (May 19), as the death toll from the disaster rose to 14.
“If there is a lesson we learned from the earthquake, it is that any emergency calls for prompt and rapid reconstruction,” regional President Stefano Bonaccini said.
“Nothing will stop,” the governor told reporters, referring to business, tourism and other activities in the wealthy northern region.
Reuters video footage from the town of Lugo in Emilia-Romagna showed cars submerged in water and flooded homes, as some residents rode bicycles or paddled through the watery streets.
More than 15,000 people have been forced to leave their homes due to floods and hundreds of landslides, and many blocked in their homes have no electricity and dwindling food supplies. Some evacuated flood victims sheltered in a national museum, where volunteers provided cots for them to sleep on.
“I am very happy here … But I feel bad,” 74-year-old evacuee Gabriella Valenti told Reuters. “I am among the luckiest maybe … I still have a home but there are people who lost everything. They don’t know what to do to make us feel good.”
