He expressed the region’s condolences to the victims of the extreme weather and their families and compared the disaster to the 2012 earthquakes that claimed 27 lives and causes massive devastation there.

“I have no hesitation in saying that we are facing another earthquake” Bonaccini told a press conference with Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi and other officials.

Bonaccini said he was working closely with the central government on addressing the emergency, adding that he had spoken to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is in Japan for the G7 summit, as well as President Sergio Mattarella.

He said many people had been evacuated from their homes, including 3000 in Bologna, 5000 in Faenza and 5000 in the province of Ravenna, adding that the figures were destined to rise. The bodies of three of the victims were found in Forlì - an elderly man who was swept away when the Montone River burst its banks and a man and a woman found in a flooded home in the Cava district of the city.

A 70-year-old man died in the town of Ronta di Cesena after the Savio River overflowed, while his wife’s body was found some 20 kilometres away at Zadina beach near to Cesenatico.

Another man was killed by a landslide at Montiano nel Cesenate.

Civil Protection Minister Nello Musumeci said that 50,000 people are without electricity and there is no service for 100,000 mobile telephone users and 10,000 fixed-line clients.

Regional rail traffic is suspended in Emilia Romagna, while traffic on national and high-speed trains continues to operate, he said.

The fresh wave of extreme weather comes after Emilia Romagna was hit by storms that claimed two lives at the start of the month.

“We need a different engineering approach, nothing will be the same as before, tropicalisation has come to Italy. We are ready to prepare a national plan to deal with heavy rains and long periods of drought, because we need to rethink how we manage the territory," Civil Protection Minister Nello Musumeci said. (Photo: ANSA)

Musumeci said the deadly floods and other recent disasters linked to extreme weather, such as last year’s landslide on the Gulf of Naples island of Ischia that claimed 12 lives, show the need to take a new approach to adapt to the effects of climate change.

“We need a new approach regarding the water system throughout the country,” he said.

“What happened in Emilia Romagna had already happened in Ischia and could happen in any other area of the country.

“We need a different engineering approach, nothing will be the same as before, tropicalisation has come to Italy.

“We are ready to prepare a national plan to deal with heavy rains and long periods of drought, because we need to rethink how we manage the territory.

“We will work with the other ministries and it will be possible to implement it within eight months to a year”.

The Italian branch of Greenpeace and the National Research Council’s Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection (CNR-IRPI) said in a joint statement on Wednesday that Emilia-Romagna’s and Marche’s deadly floods are linked to the global warming caused by human greenhouse-gas emissions.

“Continuing to extract and burn gas and oil is a crime that will increasingly make the climate crisis worse, with the loss of human lives, environmental destruction and serious social and economic impacts," Greenpeace Italia’s Federico Spadini said. (Photo: ANSA)

“Extreme events like those currently taking place risk becoming normality if we do not urgently address the causes of the climate crisis,” Greenpeace Italia’s Federico Spadini said.

“We are not faced with simple episodes of bad weather, but full-blown tragedies fed by the heating of the planet.

“Continuing to extract and burn gas and oil is a crime that will increasingly make the climate crisis worse, with the loss of human lives, environmental destruction and serious social and economic impacts.

“That is why we must immediately end the fossil-fuel era”.

CNR-IRPI Researcher Mauro Rossi said that “a connection between what is happening at the moment in Emilia-Romagna and the consequences of climate change exists.

Rossi said that the drought northern Italy has endured over the last year made the ground less able to absorb this intense rainfall.

“The increase in temperatures intensifies episodes of drought, dries the soil and modifies its permeability in various ways,” Rossi continued.

“At the same time, the same quantity of water falls in a shorter time span, increasing the intensity of precipitation...

“Unfortunately today we can see how the alternation of dry periods and extreme-rain events makes geo-hydrological events more likely in our territory”.

ANSA