Seven people have died in the past 24 hours as two extreme weather events split Italy between wildfires in the south and violent storms in the north.
Fires in Sicily caused the temporary closure of Palermo airport after temperatures in the city climbed to 47C on Monday.
An 88-year-old woman was reported to have died on Tuesday in San Martino delle Scale, a few miles from the Sicilian capital, after disruption caused by the fires prevented emergency services from reaching her in time. In the afternoon, the bodies of two people, aged around 75 and 77, were found in a house hit by a wildfire in Cinisi, near the airport.
Authorities closed part of the motorway as more than 55 wildfires were reported on the island. Hundreds of firefighters from other regions in Italy were due to arrive to help battle the flames.
“We have never seen anything like it,” a San Martino delle Scale resident told Italy’s Ansa news agency. “We were surrounded by fire. We could not go anywhere. We spent the night in the square. These were terrible moments.”
The storms in Lombardy claimed four lives, including that of a 16-year-old girl who was killed during a camping trip in Cedelogo when a tree fell on her tent.
A 58-year-old woman died after being crushed by a tree in Monza and a couple, both aged 19, died after the driver lost control of their car on a slippery road in Varese.
Near Palermo, more than 120 families had been evacuated from their homes in Mondello, Capo Gallo and Poggio Ridente since Monday, as clouds of smoke and ash advanced towards the city centre, making the air unbreathable, and the sirens of fire engines and ambulances resounded across the city. More than 200 people in Palermo had sought medical attention for smoke inhalation. In the early hours of the afternoon, the main streets of the Sicilian capital, normally crowded with tourists, were almost deserted.
Hundreds of families were forced to flee the Borgo Nuovo district, a few miles from the city centre, because of the fires.
“We have lost everything”, said one resident. ‘‘I had not time to pack. Now I need to find a place to sleep tonight.”
Temperatures in Palermo soared on Monday, breaking the previous record for the city of 44.8C set in 1999. The National Institute for Astrophysics said 47C was recorded at its digital weather station at the top of the medieval Palazzo dei Normanni at 3.42pm.
Hospitals across the city reported a sharp rise in the number of people seeking emergency care for heat-related illnesses. Hundreds of patients at Hospital Cervello, in the north of Palermo, were evacuated and moved to another health facility, and two hospitals had suspended routine appointments.
The church of the convent of Santa Maria di Gesù, dating back to the 15th century, and located in the outskirts of Palermo, was also hit by the flames.
In the east Sicilian city of Catania, temperatures were close to 47C and people were struggling with power cuts and water supply problems. The local airport, Italy’s fifth-biggest, was closed last week after a fire in a terminal building and has reopened only for a few flights.
Temperatures rose to 47.6C in some parts of southern Italy and were forecast to remain so on Tuesday before a drop on Wednesday. The European record of 48.8C was registered in Floridia, Sicily, in August 2021.
The governor of Sicily, Renato Schifani, has asked the central government in Rome to declare a state of emergency in the region.
The extreme heat has led to the deaths of at least six other people within the last two weeks, including a 50-year-old Tunisian man who died while working on a farm in Viterbo, in the Lazio region.
Photos on social media showed a fire threatening the ancient archaeological site of Segesta. Local authorities said the blaze was put out and the site was temporarily closed to check for potential damage.
The farmers’ association, Coldiretti, said Sicily was facing an “unprecedented catastrophe and incalculable environmental damage”.
The northern regions were bearing the brunt of the arrival of cooler air from northern Europe, with more torrential rain and gales forecast in Lombardy, Trentino Alto Adige, Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia.
On Monday, stormy weather felled trees and blocked the metro in Milan, and the northern Italian rail company Trenord said its network had experienced widespread damage and breakdowns.
Lombardy’s fire service received hundreds of calls as strong winds ripped the roofs off several homes. Giuseppe Sala, the mayor of Milan, said local people endured a sleepless night as winds exceeded 63mph (100km/h).
On Monday large hailstones damaged the nose and wings of a Delta Air Lines plane that had been bound for New York, forcing it to divert to Rome Fiumicino.
Sala said: “What we are seeing is not normal. We can no longer deny that climate change is changing our lives. We can no longer turn a blind eye, and above all, we can’t not do anything.”
The climate crisis is supercharging extreme weather around the world, leading to more frequent and more deadly disasters, from heatwaves to floods to wildfires.
Italy’s civil protection minister, Nello Musumeci, said: “Climate change is not just a contingency and Italy must realise that it now has a tropical climate. On the one hand, we are paying the price of climate change, to which we should have paid more attention several years ago, and, on the other, of infrastructure that does not seem to be totally adequate for the new context.”