ROME (AP) – Storms on Monday hampered the search for more than a dozen hikers who went missing for a day after a large piece of an alpine glacier in Italy broke, sending an avalanche of ice, snow and rocks on the slope. Italian state television said another body was recovered, bringing the known death toll to seven.
Nine others were injured when the avalanche erupted from the Marmolada glacier on Sunday afternoon, when dozens of hikers made excursions, some of them stranded.
Trento prosecutor Sandro Raimondi said it was initially believed 17 hikers were missing, Italian news agency LaPresse reported. But later, state television RAI reported from the scene that the number of missing had dropped to 15 after authorities were able to locate some of those feared missing.
The separate ice block was massive, estimated at 200 meters wide, 80 meters high and 60 meters deep. Governor Luca Zaia, the Veneto region of northeastern Italy, bordering the Marmolada area, compared the avalanche to a “block of ice” the size of a dilapidated apartment building and too many rock cyclops. ”
“I can’t say anything more than the facts, and the facts tell us that high temperatures don’t favor these situations,” Zaia told reporters.
Italy is in the middle of a heat wave lasting a few weeks, and alpine lifeguards said the temperature at the glacier altitude last week exceeded 10 ° C (50 ° F) when it normally should. of overcoming freezing at this time of year.
An ice rink in the resort town of the Canazei Dolomites served as an improvised corpse to identify the dead, a task made more difficult and daunting because rescuers said in some cases body parts were found scattered over a wide area. .
At least four bodies brought to the ice rink had been identified Monday afternoon.
RAI said three of those identified were Italians, including an experienced alpine guide who led a group of hikers. Another was a hiker whose relatives said he had just sent himself a selfie from the slope shortly before the avalanche fell.
One of the dead was from the Czech Republic, RAI said.
According to media reports, among the missing subjects are some Italians, three Romanians, one of French nationality, another of Austria and four of Czech.
Some of those hiking around the area on Sunday were stuck together as they climbed.
Raimondi said two of the injured are Germans. Zaia told reporters that one of the Germans was a 65-year-old man. Of the patients he was so seriously injured, so far identification has been impossible.
Hospital survivors suffered chest and skull injuries, Zaia said.
Drones were used to help search for any of the missing and verify security.
Sixteen cars were left unclaimed in the parking lot in the area and authorities tried to locate the occupants through license plates. It was unclear how many of the cars could have belonged to the already identified victims or the injured, all of whom were airlifted to hospitals on Sunday.
The storm forced the helicopter carrying Prime Minister Mario Draghi to the affected area.
It was not immediately known what caused a pinnacle of the glacier to break and thunder down the slope at an expert-estimated speed of about 300 km / h (about 200 mph).
But high temperatures were widely cited as a likely factor.
Jacopo Gabrieli, a polar science researcher at Italy’s CNR state research center, noted that the long heat wave, which spanned May and June, was the hottest in northern Italy during that period for nearly 20 years. years.
“It’s absolutely an anomaly,” Gabrieli said in an interview on Italian state television on Monday. Like other experts, he said it would have been impossible to predict when or if a serac, a pinnacle of a glacier overhang, could break, as it did Sunday.
Rustic shelter operators on the mountain side said temperatures at 2,000 meters (6,600 feet) recently reached 24 ° C (75 ° F), something unheard of in a place where hikers go to the summer to stay cool.
The glacier, in the Marmolada range, is the largest of the Dolomites in northeastern Italy. People ski there in the winter. But the glacier has been melting rapidly over the past few decades, with much of its volume gone. Experts at Italy’s CNR research center, which has a polar science institute, estimated a couple of years ago that the glacier will disappear in 25-30 years.
The Mediterranean basin, which includes southern European countries such as Italy, has been identified by UN experts as a “hot spot of climate change”, likely to suffer from heat waves and water shortages, among other consequences.
Pope Francis, who has made caring for the planet a priority for his papacy, tweeted an invitation to pray for the victims of the avalanche and their families. “The tragedies we are experiencing with climate change must push us to urgently seek new ways that are respectful of people and nature,” Francis wrote.