Rome — A large chunk of an Alpine glacier broke off Sunday afternoon and slid down a mountainside in Italy, sending ice, snow and rocks tumbling over hikers on a popular summit trail, killing at least six and injuring eight, authorities said. .
Around 10 people may be missing, Civil Protection official Gianpaolo Bottachin was quoted as saying by the online version of Italian daily Corriere della Sera. But Botacin later told state television that it was not yet possible to provide an exact number.
The Marmolada mountain glacier is the largest in the Dolomites in northeastern Italy, and people ski there in the winter. But the glacier has been melting rapidly in recent years.
Experts from the Italian state research center CNR, which has an institute for polar sciences, say the glacier will no longer exist in the next 25-30 years and most of its volume is already gone. The Mediterranean basin, shared by southern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, has been identified by UN experts as a “climate change hotspot” likely to suffer heat waves and water shortages, among other consequences.
As of Sunday evening, officials were still working to determine exactly how many hikers were in the area when the ice avalanche hit, said Walter Millan, a spokesman for the National Alpine Rescue Corps, who provided the number of dead and injured.
Marmolada from Italy. Giovanni Mereghetti/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Rescuers were checking license plates in the parking lot as part of a sweep to determine how many people might be missing, a process that could take hours, Milan told The Associated Press 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, Millan said. Of the eight hospitalized survivors, two are in serious condition, authorities 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 at least five helicopters and rescue dogs were involved in the search of the Mount Marmolada area.
The search for more victims or missing has been temporarily suspended while rescuers assess the risk of more breaking off the glacier, Walter Kainelli, after conducting a rescue mission with a search dog, told state television.
Rescuers said the ice blocks continued to collapse. In the early evening it started to rain lightly.
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 “snow, ice and rock dumping”. 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 have obviously influenced” 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 a glacier “is even more impossible to predict.”
In separate comments on Italian state television, Milan called the recent temperatures “extreme heat” for the peak. “It’s obviously something abnormal.
The injured were airlifted to several hospitals in the Trentino-Alto Adige and Veneto regions, according to rescue services.
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