The death toll in Italy and Switzerland rose to 25, with the mud-caked bodies 
of a 1-year-old Italian boy and a woman believed to be his mother among the 
latest uncovered. A total of 21 people in the two countries were missing and 
feared dead.

On Tuesday, emergency crews evacuated whole villages in the paths of the Po, 
Italy's longest river, and the Ticino that feeds into it from the Alps.

``Even those who were reluctant to leave their homes, like the elderly, 
eventually were convinced,'' said the Rev. Pier Luigi Rossi, one of a few 
people still in the riverside village of San Rocco al Porto on Tuesday 
afternoon.

Water was climbing within inches of the sandbags newly lining the Po, a few 
steps from Rossi's church. He too was leaving soon.

The Po already had burst its banks at some points. By Tuesday night, the 
flood crest was passing the old trade town of Piacenza, home to columned 
Romanesque churches and a Botticelli painting.

The Po divides the rich agricultural regions of Lombardy and Emilia Romagna, 
emptying into the lagoons of Venice. Tuesday, it hit its highest level in at 
least a half-century; its height at Piacenza was the highest ever recorded 
there.

While there has been some flooding of churches, where much of Italy's 
cultural patrimony is cached, the water generally has not yet threatened 
works of art, said Vincenzo Pandolfino of the Culture Ministry's art 
protection squad. Damage to Italy's countless masterpieces was not expected 
to near that suffered by Florence in a ruinous 1966 flood.

In both countrie!s, however, authorities said overall damage would be in the 
hundreds of millions of dollars.

Flooding forced the Fiat auto giant to shut down two of its biggest plants in 
its hometown of Turin. Blocked roads and railways and inundated factories 
made it impossible for suppliers to deliver parts, spokesman Franco Sodano 
said.

Officials were thinking of opening upstream dikes to ease the threat to 
communities downstream, Public Works Minister Nerio Nesi said.

``We are in a state of anxiety, of high emergency,'' Nesi told reporters, 
adding, ``The situation now could become very dangerous.''

Along the Ticino, water lapped at the third floors of evacuated palazzos in 
the Roman-era Lombard town of Pavia. Firefighters ferried food and clean 
water to the few holdouts who refused to leave.

The floods and landslides started Saturday in southern Switzerland and 
northern Italy after days of pounding rain. Flood water roaring out of the 
Alps brought Lake Maggiore on the Swiss-Italian border to its highest level 
in 160 years.

Most of the deaths came over the weekend when mud, rock and water rushed 
through villages and towns, sweeping away even massive stone houses.

In the Swiss village of Gondo, perched in the Alps above the Italian border, 
rescuers digging through mud and rock found only bodies Tuesday.

Hopes faded for the 10 people still missing in Switzerland. Jean-Rene 
Fournier, president of the Valais canton (state) government, said it now 
appeared that a body recovered Monday in Gondo was that of a woman whom 
rescuers had heard faintly tapping just hours before.

With roads to Switzerland's famed ski resort of Zermatt blocked, authorities 
used helicopters to fly out stranded tourists. Seven-hundred had left by late 
Tuesday; 1,000 more were on a waiting list.

Of the 25 confirmed deaths, 19 occurred in Italy and six in Switzerland.