A big chunk of an Alpine glacier broke away Sunday and rushed down a mountain in Italy, crashing into hikers on a popular trail on the summit, killing at least six and injured nine, police said, warning that the death toll might rise.
The toll was provided by a local Civil Protection official, Gianpaolo Bottacin, who also stressed that the situation was “changing” and that up to 15 individuals were missing.
In the late evening, the National Alpine and Cave Rescue Corps tweeted a phone number to call for family or friends in the event of “failure to return from probable trips” to the glacier.
Rescuers were verifying licence plates in the parking lot as part of a search to ascertain how many individuals were missing, a process that might take hours, Corps spokesman Walter Milan told The Associated Press by phone.
The glacier in the Marmolada range is the largest in the Dolomite mountains in northeastern Italy, and people ski there in the winter. However, in recent years, the glacier has been fast melting.
The glacier will no longer exist in the next 25-30 years, according to experts at Italy’s state-run CNR research centre, which has a polar sciences institute.
The Mediterranean basin, which includes southern Europe, the Middle East, and northern Africa, has been designated as a “climate change hot area” by United Nations scientists, with heat waves and water shortages among other implications.
“We saw dead (people) and large chunks of ice and rock,” Luigi Felicetti, an exhausted-looking rescuer, told Italian state television.
According to Milan, the nationalities and ages of the deceased were not immediately revealed.
Authorities said two of the hospitalised survivors were in critical condition.
The fast-moving avalanche “came down with a noise that could be heard from a long distance,” according to ildolomiti, a local online media outlet. it stated.
The helicopter and dog search for any additional victims or missing was temporarily paused for the night as rescuers assessed the potential that more of the glacier would break off, according to Walter Cainelli, who conducted a rescue mission with a search dog.
According to rescuers, ice blocks were still falling. A gentle rain started falling in the early evening.
The Alpine rescue corps will evacuate 18 individuals who were above the location where the ice struck, according to the SUEM dispatch agency in the neighbouring Veneto province.
According to local rescue services, several of those making the hike in the region where the avalanche barreled through were roped together.
However, Milan believes that some of the hikers may be able to descend on their own, possibly utilising the peak’s cable car.
The avalanche was described as a “pouring down of snow, ice, and rock” by SUEM. A serac, or ice pinnacle, is the name given to the detached part.
The “queen of the Dolomites,” Marmolada, reaches around 3,300 metres (11,000 feet) and is the highest of the 18 summits in the eastern range of the Italian Alps, affording breathtaking vistas of neighbouring Alpine peaks.
According to the Alpine Rescue Service, the portion broke off around Punta Rocca (Rock Point), “following the itinerary generally utilised to reach the peak.”
It wasn’t immediately obvious what caused the ice to break apart and surge down the peak’s slope. However, the extreme heat wave that has gripped Italy since late June loomed as a potential influence.
“The temperatures of these days obviously had an influence” on the glacier’s partial collapse, said Maurizio Fugatti, head of Trento Province, which borders Marmolada, to Sky TG24 news.
However, Milan emphasised that the exceptionally high temperatures on Marmolada’s peak in recent days were only one possible factor in Sunday’s catastrophe.
“There are so many elements that may be involved,” Milan explained. Avalanches in general are unpredictable, he says, and the effect of warming on a glacier is “much more challenging to forecast.”
In separate comments to Italian state television, Milan described the current temperatures as “severe heat” for the peak. “Clearly, there’s something unusual going on.”
According to emergency authorities, the injured were transported to hospitals in the Trentino-Alto Adige and Veneto regions.
Prosecutors launched an investigation into the avalanche, as they have in past incidents of natural disasters in Italy.
