Freight wagons in northern Italy knocked over by strong winds
For the second year in a row, the month of May is bringing waves of bad weather in northern Italy which disrupt the country’s rail freight industry. A few wagons of a convoy near Borgo Mantovano, a town between Verona and Bologna, was knocked over by the strong winds. “I have never seen freight trains being turned over by the wind”, said Alberto Borsari, the town’s mayor.
Luckily, nobody was hurt by the train being flipped by the strong winds, as Borsani mentioned on Facebook. From the available video footage, it looks like the wagons were not moving, but actually stationed in Borgo Mantovano on a multi-track bundle. The impact of the current bad weather in northern Italy does not only create problems for the rail industry, as many houses are being left roofless and many basements flooded.
Not a new problem
As mentioned, extreme weather conditions in the Po Valley area brought disruption to the rail freight industry also last year. In the Emilia Romagna region, floods caused 14 victims and stranded tens of thousands. Rail freight companies were not spared, with a couple of terminals being inundated and many lines being closed due to damages. One of the root causes of these recent waves of bad weather is climate change, which is having an effect all over Europe. Other than Italy, last summer brought massive floods also in Slovenia, Sweden and Norway.
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