Bad weather: about 400 evacuated in Lombardy, Region requests state of emergency

New story compared to the 6:30 edition. The toll of the disturbance that crossed Northern and Central Italy between Thursday 20 and Friday 21 August 2026 can be measured in three figures: about 400 people evacuated in Lombardy, about a thousand fire brigade interventions — of which over 400 in Lombardy alone — and a formal request for recognition of the state of emergency submitted to the government by the President of the Region Attilio Fontana (Today, Il Messaggero).

“recognition of the state of emergency for the damage caused by the wave of bad weather” — Attilio Fontana, President of the Region of Lombardy

The state of emergency is not a judgment on the severity of the bad weather: it is the procedure that unlocks extraordinary powers and state resources for restoration. The request is addressed to the minister responsible for Civil Protection and must be approved by the Council of Ministers: at present it has been submitted, not granted.

Where it struck

The most detailed episode concerns Isola di Fondra, in the province of Bergamo: late on Thursday evening 250 guests of a campsite were evacuated, threatened simultaneously by a landslide upstream and by the rising of a stream downstream. This is a preventive evacuation, and it alone accounts for over half of the people removed from their accommodations in the region.

In Tuscany the nature of the phenomenon is different: thunderstorms with strong lightning activity and gusts of wind. The LaMMA Consortium recorded over 23 thousand lightning strikes between 11:00 and 23:00 on Thursday, with over 8 thousand concentrated in two hours: about a third of the lightning strikes detected in the twelve-hour window discharged in a sixth of that time. Gusts reached 106 kilometers per hour on the Pisa coast and 103 in the Florence area, with about 6 thousand households left without electricity. In Florence the City Council counted at least 23 fallen trees and damage to the tramway line.

Today’s picture

For Saturday 22 August, the National Department of Civil Protection has assessed a yellow alert for thunderstorms over Basilicata, Campania, Molise and Puglia, and an alert for hydraulic risk over Lombardy (Fanpage).

The two alerts have different origins, and the distinction explains the geography of the bulletin. In the South, these are the residual thunderstorms linked to the passage of the disturbance, with weather gradually improving over the course of the weekend. In Lombardy the risk is hydraulic: it does not concern what is falling from the sky now, but water that has already fallen and is flowing down from mountain basins toward lowland waterways, with a time lag that can last days.

In Naples the City Council has ordered a yellow weather alert from 2:00 PM on Friday 21 to 2:00 PM on Saturday 22 August, with the closure of city parks and a ban on access to public beaches (Napoli Magazine). These are ordinary measures in the case of a yellow alert, the least severe on the three-color scale.

What is not quantified

The available material does not contain an economic estimate of the damage, nor a national tally of the people affected outside Lombardy. No victims are indicated. The figure of a thousand fire brigade interventions is national and includes very different situations — fallen trees, flooded underpasses, securing of roofing — and is not an indicator of damage, but of the rescue workload.

The next verifiable step is the Council of Ministers’ resolution on Lombardy’s request: without it, state resources for restoration will not be activated.