Bad weather causes pipeline blast in Italy, 8 injured

Eight people were injured in Italy on Friday as a gas pipeline took fire following explosions caused by a landslide, a day after three people were killed by bad weather in the country, local reports said.

Three households in the surroundings of the gas pipeline were hit by the explosions occurred near the central city of Teramo that triggered flames visible at a distance of many kilometers, according to eyewitnesses.

Among the eight people rushed to hospital, there was a 10-year-old boy, local health sources were quoted as saying by ANSA news agency. Four of them were only slightly injured, but in a state of shock, ANSA said.

Some 250,000 residents in Abruzzo region, where Teramo is located, were cut off from electricity supply due to strong winds and incessant rainfall, Tgcom24 channel reported.

In Naples, a city in southern Italy, the fall of a scaffolding damaged some parked cars and disrupted traffic, while a wind storm hit Capri, a nearby island, prompting authorities to stop sea connections with the mainland.

"It is a miracle that we are alive, this morning a real tragedy could have happened," a newspaper seller named Giorgio Industria told Naples-based Il Mattino daily. The man said a tree was uprooted by the wind and suddenly fell down close to his shop.

Continual snowfall on Friday wreaked havoc on road and rail traffic in many parts of Italy, including Molise region, in the south, where the snow blanket was up to one meter high and dozens of salt trucks were at work to prevent more fatalities from happening.

Local experts told Rai State television that the extraordinary wave of bad weather was caused by a sudden drop of air pressure that triggered strong winds and also combined with intense precipitations. Endit