Rain-swollen rivers flood some towns in north Italy; Venice prepares to raise mobile dike in lagoon

Rivers swollen by days of downpours flooded some towns in northern Italy on Tuesday, while in Venice, authorities were preparing to activate a mobile barrier in the lagoon in hopes of sparing the city from high-tide flooding, which would be rare in May.

In the tourist town of Ravenna in northeast Italy, authorities urged residents to move to upper stories of buildings to ride out the storm. In Riccione, a beach town on the Adriatic Sea, the mayor warned people to stay home as some took to rubber dinghies to navigate streets.

In Venice, the barrier system, known by its acronym MOSES, and recalling the Biblical account of the Red Sea parting, will be lifted Tuesday night for the first time ever in May. It is nearly 20 years to the day when construction on the project, which is still not officially completed, began.

Firefighters in Riccione, in the northern region of Emilia-Romagna, were deployed to rescue people from flooded homes and businesses. By Tuesday afternoon, firefighters had carried out around 40 rescues in the province of Rimini, parts of which are on the Adriatic coast. Reinforcements for the rescuers were moved in from the cities of Forli'-Cesena, Ferrara and Bologna.

In the area between Ancona, a major Adriatic port, and Pesaro-Urbino, two towns popular with tourists, firefighters carried out 80 interventions for local flooding, fallen trees and mudslides and rescued motorists in difficulty, the corps said in a tweet.

Pesaro, an Adriatic beach town in the region of Marche, reported flooding, while in Cesena, a city in the neighboring region of Emilia-Romagna, the Savio River overflowed its banks and inundated streets.

In Modena, a small city famed for gastronomical products, authorities said they would close local bridges to traffic on Friday evening as a precaution against rising river levels.

Elsewhere, in the town of Senigallia, the Misa River's waters were receding, local officials said.

Meteorologists say Italy can expect several days of heavy rain, pummeling the north which had been suffering a shortfall of precipitation for weeks this spring.

Schools in areas bracing fearing flooding were closed.

Train travel was halted on the Bologna-Ancona land the Ravenna-Faenza routes, Italian media said.

Earlier this month, a day and a half of nonstop rain caused flooding in Italy’s populous Emilia-Romagna region, leaving at least two people dead as riverbeds left dry by drought overflowed their banks.

The intense rainfalls came as Italy had been bracing for a second year of drought, which has depleted its largest river, the Po. The river supports agriculture in the vast Po River Valley before emptying into the Adriatic Sea east of Bologna.