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STORM

Swiss gym festival tent collapse injures 39

Thirty nine people were injured, six of them seriously, when a marquee tent collapsed at the federal gymnastics festival in Biel in the canton of Bern on Thursday evening as a vicious storm swept through western and northwestern Switzerland.

Published: 20 June 2013 22:56 CEST
Swiss gym festival tent collapse injures 39
Photo: Schweiz Aktuell/SRF

Bern cantonal police confirmed the injury count as media reports told of devastation at the festival site after heavy rain and winds gusting above 100 kilometres an hour hit the festival site for the second time in a week.

Ambulances from the cantons of Bern, Solothurn and Neuchâtel took the victims to hospitals, with help from the Swiss army.

At a press conference police said 33 of the victims were not seriously injured.

The festival was forced to cancel an opening ceremony on Thursday evening last week, also due to high winds.

The latest storm was more serious, according to media reports.

“People were running for their lives,” said Matthias Rusch, an editor with Swiss broadcaster SRF.

He described how the marquee tent flipped in the air and many people were trapped under the debris.

Hundreds of people are camping in tents at the festival, many of which were thrown into the air and scattered around the grounds.

The storm originated from France and tracked through Geneva starting around 4pm, moving across the northwest of Switzerland through the cantons of Vaud, Bern, Neuchâtel, Jura and Basel.

Winds gusting up to 130 kilometres an hour were recorded in Geneva.

Hailstones as big as five centimetres in diameter were reported in Neuchâtel.

The storm, coming a day before the first official start of summer, passed rapidly through the country, lasting just 15 minutes in Geneva before moving on.

It came on the heels of a four-day heatwave in Switzerland with temperatures well above 30 degrees, a period that followed earlier bouts of heavy rain and windstorms.

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CLIMATE

Four dead as storms, floods and tornadoes wreak havoc across northern and central Italy

High winds, tornadoes and giant hail: extreme weather hit many parts of Italy's north and centre-north this weekend, leaving at least four holidaymakers dead and causing widespread damage. Weather alerts continue over the coming days.

Published: 31 August 2020 09:28 CEST
Four dead as storms, floods and tornadoes wreak havoc across northern and central Italy
File photo: Marco Bertorello/AFP

Severe weather has been reported over the weekend everywhere  from South Tyrol down to the central region of Lazio around Rome, with at least four people killed in two separate incidents, and several reported missing.

In Tuscany, two girls aged three and 14 were reportedly killed on Saturday night when a tornado reportedly uprooted a tree which hit their tent at a campsite in Marina di Massa.

Two German tourists were killed on Sunday night during severe flooding on the Brenner state road near Bolzano, South Tyrol, the Ansa news agency reports. A family car collided with a lorry, killing two of the passengers; a 45-year-old father and 67-year-old grandmother. A seven-year-old boy and his grandfather reportedly survived, while the lorry driver was unhurt. 

The vehicles had been diverted onto the local road when the motorway was closed due to storms. The motorway has now reopened on Monday, however train lines in the area remain closed.

A 38-year-old man has been reported missing in the Varese area after being swept away by a swollen river.

The city of Verona is bracing for further flooding after being hit by multiple waves of bad weather since August 23rd, with high winds and giant hailstones also causing considerable damage in the area.

Severe damage was reported across much of the Veneto region, with the Vicenza and Belluno areas also hit particularly hard. The famed ski resort of Cortina d'Ampezzo in Belluno suffered landslides due to strong winds and heavy rain.

In the Vicenza area of Veneto a tromba d'aria (small tornado) flattened trees, fences and road signs and damaged buildings.

The bad weather reached neighbouring Lombardy with hailstones “the size of eggs” reported in Cremona and Mantova, and heavy rain and flooding in Alessandria.

And in Bergamo, firefighters had to clear roads made impassable by severe hail.

Meanwhile in parts of the south, fire crews have been battling blazes in woods and scrubland from southern Tuscany and Marche to Sicily after a hot, dry summer. 
 
Italy's Civl Protection department continued to issue weather warnings on Monday with orange (level two) alerts in place for Veneto, Trentino Alto Adige and Lazio.
 
 
Lower-level yellow alerts were also issued for Friuli Venezia Giulia, Lombardy and Tuscany.
 
With the wave of bad weather expected to spread south over Monday and Tuesday, yellow alerts were also issued for the regions of Abruzzo, Emilia Romagna, Marche, Molise, Puglia, Sicily, Tuscany and Umbria on Monday.
 

 

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