ROME (AP) — Two foreign tourists, a 5-month-old baby and his grandmother, were missing on Tuesday after floods hit Italy’s central Tuscany region overnight, firefighters said.
Rescuers searched for the two on Tuesday using divers, rescue dogs and drones.
The baby’s parents and grandfather were rescued from a rooftop after the house where they were staying was flooded as Pisa province was battered by torrential rain. Firefighters did not specify their nationality.
The severe flooding was caused by a local river that broke its banks in Montecatini Val di Cecina in central Tuscany.
“We always aim at finding people alive, but this accident doesn’t leave us many hopes,” a spokesperson for the firefighters, Luca Cari, told SkyTG24. “The situation is very, very critical.”
The heavy rain also led to the closure of local roads and left 700 homes without electricity, Tuscany President Eugenio Giani wrote in a Facebook post on Monday night, adding that the area had not seen such intense bad weather since 1928.
Last week, Italy’s northern Emilia-Romagna region was battered by floods, forcing more than 1,000 people from their homes.
The Associated Press
