Four people were initially missing, including an 8-year-old boy and a 17-year-old teenager, according to initial reports. Regional President Francesco Acquaroli asked the government in Rome to declare a state of emergency. Prime Minister Mario Draghi announced a visit to the affected areas on Friday evening. After the drought and extreme heat phases of the spring and summer, Italy has recently been hit by severe storms, but the current situation in the Marche region on the Adriatic coast has been by far the worst. "We have apocalyptic conditions here," Alessandro Piccini, mayor of Cantiano, said in a radio interview. Videos recorded on mobile phones gave a glimpse of the full force of the storm. Cars and trucks were swept away, entire squares and shops disappeared under the masses of water, some of which were metres high. "Everything is destroyed," a man told Italian television, shaking his head. Riccardo Pasqualini, the mayor of the village of Barbara, spoke of a mother and her teenage daughter and a boy who were missing. The boy was snatched from his mother's arms by the waters just as they were leaving their car, the ANSA news agency reported. Throughout the night, emergency services, including 180 firefighters and civil defence workers, tried to bring people to safety in the affected areas. Many people, especially the elderly, were rescued by inflatable boats. Residents of communities along the Misa river were told to either leave their homes or move to higher ground. At least 50 people were injured, media reported on Friday. The civil defence force counted 700 emergency workers who were helping in the search for the missing or in the clean-up operations. Some bridges were destroyed and roads torn away. "The historic centre of our town no longer exists," the deputy mayor of Cantiano, Natalia Grilli, told the newspaper La Repubblica. She said the town has been without gas, electricity and mains water since Thursday. The area was taken completely by surprise by the storm. "The amount of water was overwhelming, it was much worse than predicted," said Italy's civil defence chief Fabio Curcio, who had rushed to the disaster area. After months of drought and dry conditions, more than 420 litres per square metre fell in about three hours, according to the central Italian region. That was as much rain as normally falls in the area in half a year. "God help us," Barbara's Mayor Pasqualini wrote on Facebook. Because of the damage, the electricity supply went down frequently in many places, and the telephone and mobile phone networks also broke down often. In the coastal town of Senigallia, which was also badly hit, schools, kindergartens, sports facilities and other public services will remain closed until at least Saturday.