France, Italy search for missing victims after deadly floods
Associated Press | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 4 years, 3 months AGO
PARIS (AP) — French authorities deployed about 1,000 firefighters, four military helicopters and troops to search for at least eight people who were missing after devastating floods hit a mountainous border region with Italy, where at least four people were killed.
Emergency workers in Italy recovered two corpses Sunday in northern Liguria that they feared may have been washed away as a result of the storms that killed two other people on Saturday.
Floods washed away houses and destroyed roads and bridges surrounding the city of Nice on the French Riviera after almost a year's average rainfall fell in less than 12 hours. Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi said over 100 homes were destroyed or severely damaged.
Rescuers on Sunday were also providing emergency assistance, including food and water, to residents living in isolated villages.
The missing include two French firefighters whose vehicle was carried away by a torrent when a road collapsed south of the village of Saint-Martin-Vesubie. Authorities fear more victims as many families couldn’t reach out to relatives due to cellphone service being down.
French Prime Minister Jean Castex, who flew over the area in a helicopter, expressed “grave concern” over the toll of the flooding.
About 10,500 homes were left without electricity on Sunday, French energy company Enedis said.
In Italy, the body of one person reported missing on Saturday — a French citizen of Italian origin — was found in the Roia River, the ANSA and LaPresse news agencies reported. The second one washed up closer to where the Roia empties into the Mediterranean along Italy’s border with France.
An Italian firefighter was killed on Saturday during a rescue operation in the mountainous northern region of Val d’Aosta. A search team also found a body in the Piedmont region’s Vercelli province, where a man had been swept away by floodwaters.
Italian firefighters also rescued 25 people trapped on the French side of a high mountain pass due to the flooding.
___
Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to the story
___
Follow all AP stories on extreme weather and climate change at https://apnews.com/hub/Climate.
ARTICLES BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
Hong Kong police arrest 4 from university student union
HONG KONG (AP) — Four members of a Hong Kong university student union were arrested Wednesday for allegedly advocating terrorism by paying tribute to a person who stabbed a police officer and then killed himself, police said.
For South Sudan mothers, COVID-19 shook a fragile foundation
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — Paska Itwari Beda knows hunger all too well. The young mother of five children — all of them under age 10 — sometimes survives on one bowl of porridge a day, and her entire family is lucky to scrape together a single daily meal, even with much of the money Beda makes cleaning offices going toward food. She goes to bed hungry in hopes her children won’t have to work or beg like many others in South Sudan, a country only a decade old and already ripped apart by civil war.
For South Sudan mothers, COVID-19 shook a fragile foundation
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — Paska Itwari Beda knows hunger all too well. The young mother of five children — all of them under age 10 — sometimes survives on one bowl of porridge a day, and her entire family is lucky to scrape together a single daily meal, even with much of the money Beda makes cleaning offices going toward food. She goes to bed hungry in hopes her children won’t have to work or beg like many others in South Sudan, a country only a decade old and already ripped apart by civil war.