Italian Civil protection officials said a 53-year-old volunteer firefighter died at Val d’Aosta during a rescue operation in bad weather conditions.

Authorities reported 11 people as missing in the Piedmont region where several villages were cut off after the downpour rendered roads impassable. They said the situation was “extremely critical.”
The whole region of Veneto has been on alert this weekend for heavy rain and high winds, along with many other parts of northern Italy.
The storms have also affected the regions of Lombardy, Liguria, adjacent to areas of France where 8 people were missing after the region around Nice suffered a sharp rise in water levels.

Authorities in Venice expected the city — which also suffered violent storms — to be submerged by an ‘acqua alta’, an occasional tidal peak coming in from the Adriatic to reach the Venetian Lagoon and flood the iconic Saint Mark’s Square.
But flooding has been kept by the long-awaited and controversial Mose flood barrier system, which was activated for the first time on Saturday.