The intense heatwave that has swept through Italy for a week and has been linked to a number of deaths is set to continue today, with the number of major Italian cities on maximum alert - code red - increasing. for dangerous weather increases to 18, the Italian news agency ANSA reported, quoted by BTA.
When the Ministry of Health announces a red code for a city, it means that the heat is so dangerous that it threatens not only vulnerable groups such as the sick and the elderly, but also the healthy.
The cities for which a red code has been declared today are Ancona, Bologna, Bolzano, Brescia, Campobasso, Florence, Frosinone, Genoa, Latina, Milan, Palermo, Perugia, Rieti, Rome, Turin, Trieste, Verona and Viterbo.
A 70-year-old truck driver was found dead in his truck parked on the A4 motorway early this morning. The hypothesis that the cause is the heat is not excluded. Yesterday in Palermo, a 53-year-old woman with a heart condition fainted and died due to the high temperatures. On Monday, a man died in extreme heat while working on a construction site near Bologna. Near Turin, a 70-year-old man drowned in flash floods caused by torrential rains following the extreme weather conditions.
Accidents in emergency rooms across Italy have increased by 20% amid the heat, the Italian Society of Emergency and Critical Care Medicine said.
Meanwhile, a farmers' organization called for special measures to protect the estimated half a million farm workers who harvest crops in the summer heat. A heat protection protocol will be signed today at the Ministry of Labor to ensure the safety of workers during the ongoing heat wave.
In Florence, Bergamo and Milan, there were heat-related power outages due to the sharp increase in the use of air conditioners and fans, as well as the overheating of power grid cables.
In recent years, Italy has suffered a number of devastating and often deadly extreme weather events and is particularly exposed to the climate crisis. Extreme weather events linked to the climate crisis caused more than 765,000 deaths worldwide between 1993 and 2022, including around 38,000 in Italy, "Germanwatch" said in its report "Climate Risk Index 2025" in February. The UN Development, Environment and Human Rights Organization said Italy was the fifth country worst hit by these climate events during the period, after the Dominican Republic, China, Honduras and Myanmar. Scientists say the climate crisis caused by greenhouse gas emissions is making extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts, storms and floods more frequent and intense.