Epidemic Fear In Po Delta

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31222, 21 November 1966, Page 13

Epidemic Fear In Po Delta

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) ROME, November 20. Troops and volunteers struggling to repair dykes in the flooded Po delta had to take time off today to dispose of hundreds of bloated animal carcasses floating in the muddy waters.

The bodies of drowned cows, sheep and other animals are being dumped into pits and sprayed with quicklime to prevent an outbreak of disease among the harried human population of the flooded area. Public health officials are taking all possible steps to prevent a typhoid epidemic, which could break out as a result of the devastating floods that hit the area two weeks ago. The incubation period for the disease is between 10 days and three weeks. Work on the dykes was speeded yesterday with the return of sunshine to the lowlying delta, where 10,000 people have been evacuated from their homes. UNDER WATER

The villages of Scardovari and Bonelli remained under water today. Over much of the flooded area—about 27,000 acres—there was silence broken only by the cackling of chickens trapped on roofs. The 9000 peasants and fishermen in the delta are accustomed to picking up their meagre possessions and fleeing from the area. Floods are a part of life in the poor marshy land of canals, dykes and lagoons,

formed by sediment deposited by the mighty River Po. LAND SINKING The root of the trouble is that while the level of the Adriatic sea is sinking by eight inches a century, the land in the delta is dropping by 14in a year. The dykes, therefore, become less effective each year. Parts of the delta are not only below sea level but also below the level of the Po itself, which for the last 125 miles flows on a kind of raised dyke platform.