Italy evacuates thousands from path of Po as death toll rises

Scant hope remained for the 21 missing. Most were believed carried away or buried when mud and water swept through Alpine towns and villages in northern Italy and southern Switzerland at the weekend onset of the flooding. Late Tuesday, helicopters rescued 69 Boy Scouts and chaperones who had been trapped in Italy's Alps since Saturday morning. Wednesday's worry was for residents of the northern plains. Tuesday, emergency crews evacuated whole villages in the paths of the Po, Italy's longest river, and the Ticino that feeds into it from the Alps.

"Even those who were reluctant to leave their homes, like the elderly, eventually were persuaded," said the Rev. Pier Luigi Rossi, one of the last people to leave the riverside village of San Rocco al Porto. Water was climbing within inches (centimeters) of the sandbags newly lining the Po, a few steps from Rossi's church. He too was leaving soon. The Po already had burst its banks at points. By Tuesday night, the flood crest was passing the old trade town of Piacenza, home to columned Romanesque churches and a Botticelli. Wednesday, the crest was expected to reach the city of Cremona, an agricultural center noted for its enduring ancient brick buildings. The Po divides the rich agricultural regions of Lombardy and Emilia Romagna, emptying into the lagoons of Venice. Tuesday, it hit its highest level in at least a half-century; its height at Piacenza was the highest ever recorded there. While there has been some flooding of churches, where much of Italy's cultural patrimony is cached, the water generally has not yet threatened works of art, Vincenzo Pandolfino of the Culture Ministry's art-protection squad said. Damage to Italy's countless masterpieces was not expected to near that which Florence suffered in a ruinous 1966 flood.

In both countries, however, authorities said overall damage would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Flooding forced the Fiat auto giant to shut down two of its biggest plants, in its Turin hometown. Cut-off roads and railways and inundated factories made it impossible for suppliers to deliver parts, spokesman Franco Sodano said. Officials were thinking of opening upstream dikes to ease the threat to the river's downstream communities, Public Works Minister Nerio Nesi said. "We are in a state of anxiety, of high emergency," Nesi told reporters, adding, "The situation now could become very dangerous." Along the Ticino, water lapped at the third floors of evacuated palazzos in the Roman-era Lombard town of Pavia. Firefighters ferried food and clean water to the few holdouts who refused to leave. The floods and landslides started Saturday in southern Switzerland and northern Italy, after days of pounding rain across the region. Flood water roaring out of the Alps brought Lake Maggiore on the Swiss-Italian border to its highest level in 160 years. Most of the victims were killed over the weekend when mud, rock and water rushed through villages and towns, sweeping away even massive stone houses. In the Swiss village of Gondo, perched in the Alps above the Italian border, rescuers digging through a layer of mud and rock were finding only bodies and body parts Tuesday. Hopes faded for the 10 people still missing in Switzerland. Jean-Rene Fournier, president of the Valais canton (state) government, said it now appeared that a body recovered Monday in Gondo was of a woman whom rescuers had heard faintly tapping just hours before _ dead before they could reach her. With roads to Switzerland's famed ski resort of Zermatt blocked, authorities used helicopters to fly out stranded tourists. Seven-hundred had left by late Tuesday; another 1,000 were on a waiting list. Italy has logged 19 of the confirmed deaths, with six in Switzerland. The four days of flooding spreading south from Switzerland have forced a total of 40,000 Italians from their homes, the civil defense agency said. As waters sank back in their banks upstream, residents began returning to homes in Turin and elsewhere.

(sda)