Sicily was battling with fires and power outages on Tuesday as the island remained in the grip of a searing heat wave.
Temperatures soared to above 40 degrees Celsius for the fourth day running with blackouts in Palermo and other cities caused by overheated cables and a spike in energy consumption fuelled by the use of air conditioning.
Blackouts knocked out traffic lights in Palermo creating chaos on the city's roads.
Hospital services were also affected by the outages with health officials warning that only emergency operations could be guaranteed.
Electricity company Enel subsequently decided to ration power on the island, resorting to staged power cuts on a rota basis which it said would last until night set in.
The company said it would continue this system until the end of the heat wave, which weathermen said would ease on Wednesday.
Sicilian emergency services, meanwhile, were flooded with calls from people feeling ill from the heat or reporting fires.
Concern was mounting in a mountainous area to the northwest of Palermo where a huge fire was spreading under strong winds.
Firefighters battled six other blazes near the Sicilian capital including one at Termini Imerese where automaker Fiat has a plant.
Fiat closed down its factory after smoke from the fires penetrated the inside of the building.
The fire also came dangerously close to a local railway line and a major power plant, which had to be shut down.
Several villas in the area were evacuated.
Another major fire caused damage to a dozen homes near Cefalu' on the north Sicilian coast.
Farmers' union Coldiretti said fire had damaged at least 1,000 hectares of grain crops across the island.
ITALIAN ENERGY CONSUMPTION CLOSE TO RECORD.
In Italy as a whole, the heat wave sent power consumption to an unprecedented high for the year and close to the all-time record set almost exactly a year ago.
At noon, Italy consumed 55,000MW of electricity in order to power air conditioners, fans and refrigerators.
The all-time record was set on June 27, 2006 when power consumption hit 55,600MW.
Weathermen said the worst of the heat was over but warned that temperatures would rise to similar levels again around the middle of July.
The southern half of the country has been baking in temperatures that have come close to 45 degrees in several cities.
Firefighters continued on Tuesday to fight blazes in the south, particularly in the regions of Calabria and Puglia.
Two elderly people died on Monday of heat-related causes evoking memories of the summer of 2003 when 7,600 deaths were attributed to the heat in Italy.
The civil protection department issued heat warnings for six cities including Rome, urging the elderly and children to stay indoors as much as possible during the hottest hours of the day.
Experts warned that fierce heat waves would become the norm rather than the exception in Italy over the next few years.
They also said this summer could be as fatally hot as that of 2003.
