Bad weather claims more victims in north Italy

The extraordinary wave of bad weather which hit northern Italy in the past days has caused two more victims and one missing, local media said on Sunday.
A landslide overwhelmed a house near the city of Varese, in northwestern Italy, in the night between Saturday and Sunday, killing a 70-year-old man who was sleeping inside.
His granddaughter, 16, died later while being rushed to hospital by rescue teams. The girl's parents and the man's wife managed to make safe.
On Sunday, a 67-year-old man was reported to be missing near the coastal city of Genoa. The man was said to have gone out on Saturday to secure his car, which was parked near a stream. But the vehicle was found to have been swept away by the water, and trace of the man was lost.
In Milan, Seveso River overflew its banks disrupting traffic and damaging several houses and businesses in the northeastern part of the business city.
"My wine cellar was totally flooded, I have to throw everything," the owner of a tavern in Milan told Rai State television. "It was like a tsunami, I had never seen anything like this before. Plumb bobs were pouring out water," another resident said.
More than 150 people had to temporarily leave their homes near Alessandria, west of Varese.
"We have 20 blocked roads, villages which have been cut off from the outside world, landslides and boulders everywhere," Alessandria Mayor Maria Rita Rossa told ANSA news agency.
Since the beginning of last week, bad weather has claimed seven ascertained victims in northern Italy, triggering malcontent among citizens who blame political negligence as one of the causes for the high death toll.
In an interview with la Repubblica newspaper on Sunday, the head of a task force recently created by the government to tackle hydrogeological instability, Erasmo D'Angelis, stressed that Italy cannot neglect prevention as it was custom in the past.
"Since 1966, some 4,200 people have been killed in Italy by around 22,000 landslides and floods, while the Italian State has paid 3.5 billion euros (4.4 billion U.S. dollars) every year for reparation works," D'Angelis noted.
Experts have recalled how the rules of nature have been often broken in favor of soil consumption in the country - where more than six million citizens are constantly exposed to hydrogeological risks - also with the help of frequent building sanctions.
"Bureaucracy and disorganization" of the Italian administrative system have hampered prevention works and caused big waste of money destined to limit disasters, D'Angelis said.
"What happened again in recent days proves ... that we cannot loose time any longer," he insisted. "It is time to turn the page and consider prevention as the country's priority," he stressed.