26 October 2011
Floods and landslides in Italy yesterday
Posted by Dave Petley
Summary: Italy suffered very heavy rainfall yesterday, triggering landslides and floods. One landslide hit a truck in La Spezia.
Yesterday, the La Spezia and Tuscany areas of Italy suffered very heavy rainfall, triggering widespread floods and landslides. La Repubblica has some interesting video footage of the outcome – unfortunately so far the toll is reported to be five fatalities with a further eight people missing. The weather forecast for today is very poor once again, such that there are severe weather warnings for a large area. Italy is of course very prone to floods, mudslides and large landslides, as covered in previous posts here.
Some landslides have occurred – particularly notable is one that occurred on the A12 motorway between Brugnato and Carrodano, in the province of La Spezia, Reported rainfall in this area has exceeded 400 mm, inducing a landslide that struck a an articulated truck (images from La Repubblica):
http://genova.repubblica.it/cronaca/2011/10/25/foto/frana_su_a12-23857211/1/
http://genova.repubblica.it/cronaca/2011/10/25/foto/frana_su_a12-23857211/1/
The news reports suggest that the driver was stuck in his cab for some hours after the incident before being rescued – I am not sure whether he was very unlucky (to be hit in the first place) or very lucky (to survive). It is however slightly surprising to see a failure affecting a tunnel portal in this way.
Dave Petley is the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hull in the United Kingdom. His blog provides commentary and analysis of landslide events occurring worldwide, including the landslides themselves, latest research, and conferences and meetings.
in this zones totaly rain (2 days) was over 500 mm
wow, this was so shmiershmosh/sad 🙁
You can see the hydrograph from Brugnato here: http://forum.meteonetwork.it/attachments/nowcasting-discussioni-climatiche-italia-settentrionale-alpi/223453d1319555727-occhio-levante-ligure-alta-toscana-bvar_rai.png very impressive the amount of rain in such a small time.
[…] A couple of days ago I highlighted that northern Italy had suffered very heavy rainfall, inducing floods and landslides in particular in the Liguria and Tuscany regions. Data on the rainfall at Brugnato in La Spezia, one of the worst affected areas, has been made available via the meteonetwork.it site: […]
its sooo sad ):
the photo shown is so terrible, flash floods and landslides are worst calamities ever. Its best government should build flood protection or barriers in flood prone areas.