Heavy Toll In Wake Of Floods

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30847, 4 September 1965, Page 15

Heavy Toll In Wake Of Floods

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) ROME, Sept. 3

Torrential rainstorms sweeing Italy for the last two days have wrought a heavy toll in death and destruction.

At least 35 persons are dead and officials believe the toll may go “much higher” when reports come in from isolated areas. One storm alone caused damage estimated at nearly £500,000, and polluted Rome’s water supply Twelve persons, ranging in age from a 19-month-old child to an 83-year-old woman, were killed in Sicily alone when a deluge hit the Trapani area. Police declared a state of emergency there. Floods have driven hundreds of families from

their homes and Rome is virtually isolated by road and rail from the north. Without Water About one million of the capital’s two million and a half inhabitants are without water after a gigantic mass of mud, swept down by flood waters, burst into a reservoir. Repairs gangs are battling in non-stop rain to put right huge stretches of roads and railways shattered by the deluge. Officials said on Wednesday that the Autostrade del Sol. where some of the worst flooding occurred north of Rome.

would probably remain closed for another five days. Troops joined police and firemen in rescue and mopping-up operations in the provinces of Rome, Umbria and Southern Tuscany. Pope Paul yesterday sent his vicar-general. Cardinal Luigi Traglia, with gifts to the flooded Prima Porta zone on the northern outskirts of Rome, where about 600 families had to leave their homes.