Rome: Two people have died after a tree fell in central Italy. Powerful storms hit multiple areas after weeks of intensely high temperatures.
Italy’s civil protection agency said severe weather would move south overnight, issuing warnings for 11 of the country’s 20 regions on Friday.
A separate incident in Tuscany killed a man and a woman after being crushed by a tree, and four others were injured when a tree fell on a campsite in the same area.
Video showed a Ferris wheel spinning out of control in the Tuscan resort of Piombino, sending at least one of its metal canopy seats into the air. No one was on board at the time, and no injuries have been reported.
“A wave of devastation is sweeping through Tuscany,” the region’s president, Eugenio Giani, said in a statement announcing a state of emergency for the art-rich region.
Further north, strong winds blew a large café parasol over St. Mark’s Square in Venice and blew masonry debris from the adjacent bell tower.
Winds of more than 140 kilometers per hour hit parts of northern Italy, damaging beach resorts in Liguria and Tuscany, meteorologists said.
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