Landslides and isolated towns in the North, hundreds evacuated in Lombardy
Storms and landslides across Lombardy, Piedmont, Friuli Venezia Giulia and Emilia-Romagna: over 400 people evacuated, a bridge destroyed in Valcamonica, up to 270 millimetres of rain at altitude. On the motorways, the first major counter-exodus.
The wave of bad weather that crossed the Centre-North between Friday and Saturday produced three types of consequences: preventive evacuations in the Alpine valleys, damaged infrastructure, and traffic under pressure during the counter-exodus weekend.
The evacuations
The largest number comes from the Bergamo area: in Isola di Fondra around 250 people were brought out of a campsite threatened by a landslide and the rising of a stream. The figure is reported by Calabria Inchieste on the basis of Protezione Civile and the fire brigade.
In Valcamonica the picture is more complex: in Sonico 57 evacuated people were housed in a multipurpose hall and in the former elementary school in the hamlet of Garda; in Vione the evacuees number around 70. Also in Rino di Sonico, a second landslide destroyed the bridge over the Val Rabbia stream, which had already been closed as a precaution: no injuries, and the earlier closure explains why.
The overall Lombardy count, communicated by the Region and reported by il Dolomiti and by Libero Reporter, is over 450 fire brigade interventions and over 400 people evacuated, with rainfall reaching 270 millimetres at altitude. This is the only aggregated numerical figure available: accounts covering the Centre-North as a whole speak generically of hundreds of evacuees, without a single figure covering all the affected regions. The two levels are not comparable — one is regional and quantified, the other interregional and approximate — and we keep them separate rather than adding them together.
Friuli Venezia Giulia
In the east the phenomenon was less severe but more widespread: between 21 and 22 August the 112 emergency call centre logged 135 calls, with flooding and fallen trees concentrated mainly in the Pordenone area. This is the kind of data that well illustrates the difference between a mountain event and a lowland event: in the valley, people are evacuated; on the plain, the sum of many small damages is counted.
The counter-exodus
The third variable is traffic. On the Autostrade Alto Adriatico network, around 180,000 crossings with a black warning code were expected on Saturday 22 August; for Sunday 23, the forecast is around 175,000 crossings with a red warning code.
The overlap between peak traffic and bad weather is the reason why emergency management these days is above all a matter of road traffic: valley-floor roads closed by landslides mean diversions onto already saturated routes, and every lost bridge — like the one over the Val Rabbia — adds kilometres to already narrow alternative routes.
What we don’t know
The available data do not allow for an assessment of economic damage, which the regions quantify only after technical surveys. We do not have, for Friuli Venezia Giulia and Piedmont, evacuee figures comparable to those from Lombardy. No estimate has been given of the time needed to restore the destroyed bridge at Rino di Sonico or the interrupted roads.
Regarding consequences for people, the only episode for which the sources explicitly confirm the absence of injuries is the collapse of the bridge at Rino di Sonico; for the other interventions, no published assessment is available. The next step is administrative: the Lombardy Region has asked the government to recognize a state of emergency, a request made public on the evening of Saturday, 22 August 2026.
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