Now almost a habit which, however, is difficult to get used to: yesterday afternoon shortly after 3pm a very intense rain began to fall which, with its power, sent the city into a tailspin for many minutes. Thunder and lightning, but fortunately no hail and the wind has always been moderate. However, it was the sewers that were put in difficulty: structures – as the environmental councilor Giuseppe Petetta has underlined several times – were clean, but now inadequate to accommodate those very intense rainfalls which until a few years ago were a rarity, but which today, due to climate change, are increasingly frequent.
In several areas of the city the streets quickly turned into raging rivers, endangering the safety of motorists and roundabouts became impassable. Many private courtyards were flooded and the water managed to penetrate garages and cellars, also infiltrating some houses and businesses on the ground floor, even in the centre. At Romiti some manholes were raised by the boiling rain and between the Santa Chiara roundabout and via Pelacano the asphalt cracked.
There are also many problems in the San Benedetto district, where water entered the homes of several citizens, and in Roncadello. Among the most affected city streets in the historic center, as in the even more violent storm of May 25th, was Corso Mazzini, where the water rose to completely cover the level of the sidewalks. However, the greatest danger, in these cases, occurs in the underpasses, where waterlogging is created which risks imprisoning cars: yesterday a bus was also stuck in via Vespucci before all the city underpasses were closed until the rain drained away, Access to the ring road is also closed.
These changes in traffic have caused several queues and inconveniences. During the afternoon the firefighters also went into action inside private homes: there were over 60 requests for intervention. While these ‘water bombs’ usually have a limited duration, yesterday afternoon the rain lasted a long time: the maximum violence lasted just under an hour, before stabilising. In this short period of time, however, over 80 millimeters of water fell in the city. Flood also in the surrounding area, in particular Forlimpopoli, where the moat of the fortress was also flooded.
