ROME (AP) — A large chunk of an Alpine glacier broke off Sunday afternoon and roared down a mountainside in Italy, sending ice, snow and rocks tumbling over hikers on a popular summit trail and killing at least six and injuring eight, authorities said.
It could not immediately be determined how many hikers were in the area or whether there were any missing, said Walter Milan, a spokesman for the national alpine rescue corps, which provided the number of dead and injured.
Rescuers were checking license plates in the parking lot as part of a search to determine how many people might be missing, a process that could take hours, Millan said by phone.
“We saw dead (people) and huge pieces of ice, rocks,” rescuer Luigi Felicetti, looking exhausted, told Italian state television.
The nationalities or ages of the dead were not immediately available, Milan said. Of the eight hospitalized survivors, two were in serious condition, emergency services said.
The fast-moving avalanche “came down with a roar and could be heard for a long distance,” local online media site ildolomiti.it said.
Earlier, the National Alpine and Cave Rescue Corps tweeted that the search of the affected area on Mount Marmolada included at least five helicopters and rescue dogs.
The SUEM dispatch office, which is based in the nearby Veneto region, said 18 people who were above the area where the ice hit would be evacuated by the Alpine Rescue Corps.
But Millan said some of the slope may be able to get down on their own, including by using the gondola at the top.
SUEM said the avalanche consisted of “outpourings of snow, ice and rocks”. The detached section is known as a serac or ice peak.
Marmolada, rising to about 3,300 meters (about 11,000 feet), is the highest peak in the eastern Dolomites, offering spectacular views of other alpine peaks.
The Alpine Rescue Service said in a tweet that the segment broke off near Punta Roca (Rock Point), “on the route normally used to reach the summit”.
It was not immediately clear what caused the chunk of ice to break off and hurtle down the summit slope. But the intense heat wave sweeping Italy since late June could be a factor.
“The temperatures during these days clearly had an impact” on the partial collapse of the glacier, Maurizio Fugatti, president of Trento province, which borders Marmolada, told Sky TG24 news.
But Milan stressed that the high heat, which has soared above 10 C (50 F) unusually on top of Marmolada in recent days, was only one possible factor in Sunday’s tragedy.
“There are so many factors that can be involved,” Millan said. Avalanches are generally unpredictable, he said, and the effect of heat on the glacier “is even more unpredictable.”
In separate comments to Italian state television, Milan called the latest temperatures “extreme heat” for the peak. “It’s obviously something out of the ordinary.”
The injured were airlifted to several hospitals in the Trentino-Alto Adige and Veneto regions, according to rescue services.
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