Cyclone Harry caused €1,5 billion in damage in Sicily

The Italian government has declared a state of emergency due to the devastation caused by the Mediterranean cyclone Hari. The storm caused damage in the Italian region of Sicily alone, estimated at over 1,5 billion euros. There was also extensive damage in the regions of Sardinia and Calabria.

Authorities will initially allocate 100 million euros for first emergency actions to address losses in the three regions. The state of emergency in Sicily, Sardinia and Calabria will last 12 months and can be extended for another 12 months.

The storm brought torrential rain, gale-force winds with gusts exceeding 100 kilometers per hour, and waves at times 9-10 meters high, causing damage to road sections, flooding shopping areas, hotels, and bars. The streets of several towns in Sicily turned into rivers.

In some places, the rising sea wiped out the beach. Other sections of coastal promenades were literally swallowed by the sea. In other places, the water dragged sand from the beaches into the streets. The storm literally brought the city of Taormina, known as a magnet for tourists on the island of Sicily, to its knees. Archaeological sites in the three regions were also affected. The same cyclone caused major problems in neighboring Greece.

Victims at sea

380 people may have drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea late last week as Hurricane Harry battered southern Italy and Malta, the Italian coast guard said, as quoted by Guardian.

A shipwreck that claimed 50 lives has been confirmed by Maltese authorities. Only one person survived the incident. The man was at sea for 24 hours, clinging to the wreckage of the ship, before being rescued by a merchant vessel. He said he believed everyone else on the boat, which set sail from Tunisia on January 20, had died, according to Alarm Phone, an organization that runs a hotline for people in distress at sea.

In a separate tragedy last week, one-year-old twin girls from Guinea are believed to have died off the coast of the Sicilian island of Lampedusa after the overcrowded boat they were travelling on was hit by the elements, according to UNICEF's Italian branch for migrant and refugee response.

The Italian coast guard said another 380 people who set sail from Tunisia during the cyclone, which generated huge waves in the Mediterranean Sea, may also have drowned. The coast guard is searching for eight boats launched by people smugglers from the Tunisian port city of Sfax in the past 10 days.

At least 30 people also died in the icy hell in the US

Many people in the US faced another night of sub-zero temperatures and no power after... the colossal winter storm More snow piled up Monday in the Northeast and left parts of the South covered in ice. At least 30 deaths were reported in states hit by the severe cold, the Associated Press reported. AP.

Deep snow - more than 12 inches (30 centimeters) across a 1,300-mile (2100-kilometer) swath from Arkansas to New England - halted traffic, canceled flights and prompted widespread school closures on Monday. The National Weather Service said areas north of Pittsburgh received up to 20 inches (50 centimeters) of snow and faced wind chills as low as minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 31 degrees Celsius) late yesterday.

The mounting death toll includes two people run over by snowplows in Massachusetts and Ohio, fatal sledding accidents that killed teenagers in Arkansas and Texas, and a woman whose body was found covered in snow by police dogs after she was last seen leaving a bar in Kansas. In New York, authorities said eight people were found dead outdoors over the frigid weekend.

Hundreds of thousands without power

There were still more than 560,000 power outages across the country Monday night, according to poweroutage.com. Most of those were in the South, where freezing rain over the weekend snapped tree branches and power lines, causing outages in northern Mississippi and parts of Tennessee. Officials warned that it could take days to restore power.

According to flightaware.com, more than 12,000 flights were delayed or canceled nationwide on Monday in the U.S. On Sunday, 45% of flights in the U.S. were canceled, making it the biggest day of flight cancellations since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.

The storm's impact extended far beyond its reach, as major hubs like Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport were also affected by the storm, leaving planes and crews on the ground.