ROME – A large section of an alpine glacier broke on Sunday and fell down a mountain in Italy, slashing snow, ice and rock into pedestrians on a popular route, killing at least six people and nine Wounded, officials warned the toll could climb.
A local civil defense official, Gianpaolo Bottascin, was cited by Italian news agency ANSA as providing the toll, but stressed that the situation was “evolving” and that perhaps 15 people could be missing.
Late in the evening, the National Alpine and Cave Rescue Corps tweeted a phone number to call family or friends in case of “failure to return from a potential excursion” to the glacier.
Corps spokesman Walter Milan told the Associated Press by telephone that rescuers were checking license plates in the parking lot as part of a check to see how many people could be unaccounted for, a process that could take hours.
The glacier in the Marmolada range is the largest of the Dolomite Mountains in northeastern Italy and people ski there in winter. But glaciers are melting rapidly in recent years.
Experts from Italy’s state-run CNR Research Center with the Institute of Polar Sciences say the glacier will no longer exist in the next 25-30 years and that much of its volume has already been lost.
The Mediterranean basin, shared by southern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, has been identified by UN experts as a “climate change hot spot”, likely to suffer from heat waves and water shortages, among other consequences.
“We saw dead (people) and ice, huge pieces of rock,” weary-looking rescuer Luigi Felicetti told Italian state TV.
The nationality or age of the dead were not immediately available, Milan said.
Officials said two of the hospitalized survivors were in critical condition.
The fast-moving avalanche “came down with a roar that could be heard from afar,” said local online media site ildolomiti.it.
After conducting a rescue operation with a sniffer, Walter Canelli told state television that the search by helicopter and dogs for any more victims or missing was temporarily halted for the night while rescuers assessed the risk. that more glaciers may break.
Rescuers said snowflakes were falling continuously. In the evening it started raining lightly.
The SUEM dispatch service, which is based in the nearby Veneto region, said 18 people who were above the area where the snow hit would be evacuated by alpine rescuers.
According to local emergency services, some of the trekkers were tied with ropes in the area where the avalanche occurred.
But Milne said some hikers may be able to get down on their own using the peak’s cable car.
SUEM said the avalanche involved “fall of snow, ice and rock”. The separated section is known as a serac, or summit of ice.
Dubbed as the “Queen of the Dolomites,” Marmolada rises nearly 11,000 feet and is the highest of 18 peaks in that eastern range of the Italian Alps, offering spectacular views of other alpine peaks.
The Alpine Rescue Service said in a tweet that the section broke off near Punta Rocca (Rock Point), “with the itinerary normally used to reach the peak.”
It was not immediately clear what caused some of the ice to break off and move down the slope of the peak. But a severe heat wave emerged as a possible factor in Italy since late June.
“These days’ temperatures clearly had an effect” on the glacier’s partial collapse, Maurizio Fugatti, president of the province of Trento, which borders Marmolada, told Sky TG24 news.
But Milan insisted that the high heat, which unusually soared above 50 F on Marmolada’s peak in recent days, was only a possible factor in Sunday’s tragedy.
“There are a number of factors that may be involved,” Milne said. Avalanches in general cannot be predicted, he said, and the effect of heat on glaciers is “even more impossible to predict.”
In separate comments to Italian state television, Milan called the recent temperatures “extremely hot” for the extreme. “Obviously this is something unusual.”
According to rescue services, the injured were taken to several hospitals in the regions of Trentino-Alto Adige and Veneto.
Like other cases of disasters amid nature in Italy, prosecutors opened an investigation to see if there was any indication of possible wrongdoing linked to the avalanche.