The President of Emilia Romagna estimates the damage from the heavy rains at “billions of euros”

The floods in Emilia Romagna have caused damage “for several billion euros”, the president of this northeastern Italian region said. Stefano Bonacciniwho calculated it at 36 o’clock it rained for six months.

“The 30 million allocated by the government is welcome and I appreciate that they are making it available immediately, but here we are talking about billions of euros in damage just because of the tragedy of May 2 and 3, when four months of water fell. in 36 hours, while yesterday and the day before yesterday the six-month water did it in 36 hours,” he explained on Italian public television RAI.

According to Bonaccini, “when it rains in two weeks as in almost a year, there is little work. A phenomenon of this scale has not been seen in our country so far.

“The damage is greater than expected” but “fortunately we issued a red alert 24 hours before, otherwise it would have been an even more dramatic tragedy,” explained the regional president, a prominent member of the progressive Democratic Party.

The red alert for stormy rains continues today in the Emilia Romagna region, after at least 9 deaths and more than 20,000 evacuees were counted this Wednesday, as well as massive damage that affected power and telephone lines and sustainability in the zone.

In the provinces of Forlí, Ravena, Cesena and Ravena, entire towns are under water, and the situation could worsen in the next few hours, as the level of almost all rivers is still above the emergency threshold.

to recover “it will take a lot of work”said Bonaccini, who explained that “there are hundreds of roads that need to be rebuilt, we have to help the affected companies and citizens, and then continue with the activities.”

For this reason, he reiterated to the Government the need for resources and the urgent appointment of an extraordinary commissioner so that companies and workers could postpone the terms of mortgage and tax obligations, as well as measures to protect those who will be out of work for a while.

“We need large investments and we will immediately take steps to request an exceptional contribution in solidarity with Europe, which gave us several hundred million euros after the earthquake in 2012,” he said.

“No one will be left alone, as we did with the earthquake. After the earthquake on May 20 and 29, 2012, “we rebuilt practically everything and unfortunately we have another earthquake after 11 years. We will rebuild everything. We are hurt, we are beaten, but I have no doubt that Emilia Romagna will recover once more,” he added.

The Italian government, which convened an extraordinary Council of Ministers to resolve the state of emergency, announced that he would allocate another 20 millionwhich will be in addition to the 10 million already approved a few weeks ago when the region suffered another flood, for the first emergencies, as well as tax obligations and mortgages will be suspended for a while.

The Formula 1 Grand Prix that was supposed to take place this weekend in Ímola has also been cancelled.