According to local officials, devastating floods in northeast Italy have displaced more than 36,000 people as rising waters engulfed more homes and fresh landslides cut off hamlets.
This week, fourteen people died as a result of streets in towns and cities in the Emilia-Romagna area becoming rivers.
One of the four individuals on board was hurt when a helicopter used in efforts to reinstall electricity collapsed on Saturday near Lugo, according to the fire department.
More than 305 landslides and more than 500 roads were damaged or shut down as a result of the severe flooding in the area.
Video from the affected communities showed flooded homes and drowned automobiles, with some locals paddling or riding bicycles through the flooded streets.
The mayor of Bologna, Matteo Lepore, warned on Saturday that repairing the city's roadways and other infrastructure would take "months, and in some places, maybe years."
Hoda Abdel-Hamid of Al Jazeera claimed the devastation was evident "everywhere" while reporting from the Emilia-Romagna region's Faenza city.
“The city is covered with mud and the people are beginning to understand the extent of what’s gone – present and past,” she said.
Faenza was noticing the damage “minute by minute” as it is recognized for its ceramics “People are doing their best to salvage pieces of art,” Abdel-Hamid said.
More than 10,000 books have been detected lost to the floodwaters by the neighborhood library.
Some rescued flood victims in Lugo sought refuge in a national museum, where volunteers had set up cots for them to rest.
“I am very happy here … But I feel bad,” 74-year-old evacuee Gabriella Valenti told Reuters. “I am among the luckiest maybe … I still have a home but there are people who lost everything. They don’t know what to do to make us feel good.”
The floods are the most recent in a string of severe weather incidents that have hit Italy over the past year, making what were once extraordinary catastrophes a normal part of daily life.
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