In Flood-Stricken Area of Italy, Residents Fear This Won’t Be the Last of It

When the floods hit in the northern Italian town of Lugo this past week, overflowing a local watercourse and sending water gushing into streets and the surrounding fields, Irinel Lungu, 45, retreated with his wife and toddler to the second floor of their home.

As rescue workers navigated submerged streets in dinghies to deliver baby formula and rescue older people from their homes, the couple watched in the cold as the water rose higher and higher.

Downstairs the “water was up to my chest,” he said on Saturday, adding, “We had nowhere to go.”

Relief has not yet come to some parts of Lugo and other northern Italian towns that were inundated with floods in which 14 people died and thousands were rendered homeless. Swelled rivers and canals have submerged vast swaths of the countryside. Hundreds of dangerous landslides have paralyzed much of the area. And some landlocked towns in the mountains are completely isolated, essentially reachable only by helicopter.

On Saturday, as rain fell again, residents around the ancient city of Ravenna — once the capital of the Byzantine…