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CLIMATE

Storms in Italy: One dead as Sicily and Calabria on ‘red alert’

Italy’s Department for Civil Protection issued its most severe weather warning for parts of Sicily and Calabria as the south was battered by heavy storms and floods on Sunday and into Monday.

Published: 25 October 2021 17:01 CEST
Parts of Sicily and Calabria are under red alert as Italy’s south has been hit by severe storm and floods.
Parts of Sicily and Calabria are under red alert as Italy’s south has been hit by severe storm and floods. STRINGER / ANSA / AFP

The body of a 67-year-old man caught up in flash floods near the Sicilian town of Scordia was found by rescue workers on Sunday while his 54-year-old wife remained missing, reports the news agency Ansa.

The couple had reportedly attempted to flee the area in their car before getting swept away by the rising waters.

The website for Italy’s national fire department reported on Monday that its firefighters had carried out 580 rescues related to the floods in the space of 24 hours, conducting 400 rescue missions in Sicily and 180 in Calabria.

READ ALSO: Climate crisis: The Italian cities worst affected by flooding and heatwaves

The Department for Civil Protection issued the warning on Sunday evening, with the east of Sicily and the south of Calabria placed under red alert.

Other parts of both regions and a part of the neighbouring region of Basilicata have been placed under orange alert (heavy rainfall, landslide and flood risk), with other areas of Basilicata and much of the southeastern region of Puglia on yellow alert (localised heavy and potentially dangerous rainfall).

The department is responsible for predicting, preventing and managing emergency events across the country, and uses a green, yellow, orange and red graded colour coding system for weather safety reports.

Green signifies calm and stable conditions, while a red weather warning is issued only in the event of widespread, very intense and persistent conditions that pose a threat to public safety.

A red alert envisages a likelihood of extensive flooding, falling trees, and damage to buildings, infrastructure, and crops. It triggers the automatic closure of schools and the discretionary closure of public institutions in affected areas.

Schools were closed on Monday in the Sicilian cities of Catania and Syracuse and the provinces of Messina, Agrigento, and Enna, reports the Sicilian newspaper Giornale di Sicilia; with many also closed in the Calabrian provinces of Reggio Calabria, Catanzaro and Vibo Valentia, according to the local news outlet LaCNews24.

On Monday the Il Meteo weather news site reported that the cyclone battering the south had increased in intensity and been upgraded to a Mediterranean hurricane, with the potential to reach windspeeds of up to 120 km/h.

The bad weather in the south is expected to last at least into the middle of the week, the site reports, with the centre-north of the country facing the possible threat of heavy storms over the coming weekend due to a developing weather disturbance in the Atlantic.

Earlier this month Italy saw historic levels of rainfall, with three national records broken in the space of a few hours in the northwest of the country on October 4th.

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ENVIRONMENT

Sweden’s SSAB to build €4.5bn green steel plant in Luleå 

The Swedish steel giant SSAB has announced plans to build a new steel plant in Luleå for 52 billion kronor (€4.5 billion), with the new plant expected to produce 2.5 million tons of steel a year from 2028.

Published: 2 April 2024 13:44 CEST
Sweden's SSAB to build €4.5bn green steel plant in Luleå 

“The transformation of Luleå is a major step on our journey to fossil-free steel production,” the company’s chief executive, Martin Lindqvist, said in a press release. “We will remove seven percent of Sweden’s carbon dioxide emissions, strengthen our competitiveness and secure jobs with the most cost-effective and sustainable sheet metal production in Europe.”

The new mini-mill, which is expected to start production at the end of 2028 and to hit full capacity in 2029, will include two electric arc furnaces, advanced secondary metallurgy, a direct strip rolling mill to produce SSABs specialty products, and a cold rolling complex to develop premium products for the transport industry.

It will be fed partly from hydrogen reduced iron ore produced at the HYBRIT joint venture in Gälliväre and partly with scrap steel. The company hopes to receive its environemntal permits by the end of 2024.

READ ALSO: 

The announcement comes just one week after SSAB revealed that it was seeking $500m in funding from the US government to develop a second HYBRIT manufacturing facility, using green hydrogen instead of fossil fuels to produce direct reduced iron and steel.

The company said it also hoped to expand capacity at SSAB’s steel mill in Montpelier, Iowa. 

The two new investment announcements strengthen the company’s claim to be the global pioneer in fossil-free steel.

It produced the world’s first sponge iron made with hydrogen instead of coke at its Hybrit pilot plant in Luleå in 2021. Gälliväre was chosen that same year as the site for the world’s first industrial scale plant using the technology. 

In 2023, SSAB announced it would transform its steel mill in Oxelösund to fossil-free production.

The company’s Raahe mill in Finland, which currently has new most advanced equipment, will be the last of the company’s big plants to shift away from blast furnaces. 

The steel industry currently produces 7 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, and shifting to hydrogen reduced steel and closing blast furnaces will reduce Sweden’s carbon emissions by 10 per cent and Finland’s by 7 per cent.

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