ROME: A three-year old girl was the only survivor on Sunday of a flood that killed her family, as fierce rainstorms swept Italy and devastated the Tuscan city of Livorno, killing at least six people.
Four people from the same family were found dead in a flooded house in the city, where 40 centimetres of rainfall in four hours transformed streets into rivers and washed away cars.
The victims were a little boy, his parents and his grandfather, all found in a basement apartment, local daily Il Tirreno said.
The grandfather, who lived on first floor, had managed to rescue his three-year-old granddaughter from the basement but died when he went back to try and save his four-year-old grandson and the others, it said.
Images of the house showed a courtyard awash with mud and debris, with neighbours looking on in shock as emergency workers moved in to recover the bodies.
Residents in other parts of the city could be seen sweeping water out of their homes and piling up ruined furniture on the street, while in another courtyard a red delivery van had been flipped almost vertical by the rushing water. A fifth body was found in an area devastated by landslides, while a sixth was found in a nearby hilltop neighbourhood, fire services said.
A seventh person was killed in a road accident, though it was not yet clear whether it was due to the weather. Two other people were still believed to be missing, and continued rainfall was hampering the search.
Aerial images showed large swathes of the region underwater.
“The situation is very difficult, it’s critical. The city is on its knees,” Livorno mayor Filippo Nogarin said.
He said the government had underestimated the danger, issuing a code orange alert for the region rather than red. — AFP
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