Violent storms flattened trees in Italy’s Stradivari forest this week, according to the
BBC, which said an estimated one million cubic meters of trees were destroyed.
“It’s like after an earthquake,” Veneto governor Luca Zaia said of the devastation, the
Digital Journal reported. “Thousands of hectares of forest were razed to the ground, as if by a giant electric saw.”
Zaia said that 160,000 people in the region were left without power and the mountains in the area were “reduced to looking like the surface of the moon.”
“We’ve been brought to our knees,” he stated.
The
BBC also reported that the storms killed 12 people while villages and roads were cut off due to landslides. Many victims were killed by trees.
“It was the perfect storm during which adverse meteorological conditions contributed to the situation in the sea and winds,” civil protection chief Angelo Borrelli said,
USA Today reported. The high winds created a significant tide in Venice, flooding the city.
The lagoon city’s St. Mark’s Square was under water for days while the adjacent St. Mark’s Basilica was also inundated, with its baptistery totally flooded and its historic, mosaic floors covered by 90 cm (2.95 feet) of water, Reuters reported.
“The basilica has aged 20 years in just one day, and perhaps I am being overly optimistic about that,” said Carlo Tesserin, the church’s chief administrator.
Italian media said it was the second time this century that the basilica had been flooded, and just the fifth time it had seen such high water within the body of the cathedral in its 1,000-year history.
Reuters contributed to this report.
