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The collapse of a glacier in the Italian Alps, attributed by experts to the increase in global temperature, leaves at least seven dead and five missing. Eight other affected people have already been reported to the authorities.
Rescue teams continue to search for five people missing after the avalanche on Sunday, July 3, on the Marmolada glacier, the highest peak in the Dolomites, a chain of mountains in the eastern Italian Alps, located in the regions of Trento and Veneto.
So far, there are records of at least seven fatalities. This Tuesday, the Italian media reported the discovery of another eight missing persons. One of them appeared in a hospital in the city of Treviso, near Venice, where he has been receiving treatment since July 3.
“The current situation is that the rescue activities continue with the joint effort of the alpine rescuers and all the state administrations that are here,” said Maurizio Dellantonio, national president of Salvamento Alpino.
Little hope of finding survivors after the avalanche
Although rescue teams found human traces and climbing materials at three or four points on the mountain on Tuesday, they believe the chance of finding survivors is slim to none.
“We have to be clear, finding someone alive with this type of event is a very remote possibility, very remote, because the mechanical action of this type of avalanche has a very big impact on people,” said Alex Barattin, from Salvamento Alpino .
With the mountain peak still unstable and the danger of further landslides, rescuers have been using drones and helicopters to search for victims or try to locate them through their mobile phone signals.
“We fly over the area and when we find some remains, it is quickly lowered with ropes, a kind of photographic documentation is made, the find is taken and it is raised again,” explained Dellantonio.
“What we have found on the surface will be the same as what we will find below (the avalanche)”, when the ice melts, since “we cannot dig” because “the snow mass has consolidated so much that it cannot be excavated” . Indicated the president of the Alpine Rescue of Trentino, Walter Cainelli.
Cainelli also explained that recovering victims is a difficult task “because doing so puts first responders in danger.”
For his part, Giovanni Bernard, mayor of the town of Canazei, assured that the Marmolada “will remain closed to tourists for the time being” to focus the attention of the authorities on the rescue tasks.
The authorities consider that among the affected people there could be two Czech citizens, after the car of one of them has remained since Sunday in the parking lot from which it starts towards the glacier.
Climate change, trigger of the avalanche according to experts
The avalanche is largely attributed to rising global temperatures, which are melting glaciers in different parts of the world. Italy has been mired in a heat wave since early summer, coupled with the worst drought in the country’s north for 70 years.
Snowfall has been unusually light during the winter, making glaciers in the Italian Alps more exposed to summer heat and melt.
“The fact that it happened in a scorching summer with abnormal temperatures should be a wake-up call to understand that these phenomena, although rare, are possible,” Nicola Casagli, a geologist and avalanche expert at the AP, told the AP news agency. University of Florence. “If we don’t take decisive action to counteract the effects of climate change, they will become more and more frequent,” she added.
For his part, the Italian Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, assured during his visit to the rescue base in Canazei that the tragedy “certainly depends on the deterioration of the climatic situation.”
Meanwhile, the National Research Council (CNR), a state agency, indicated that the Marmolada glacier could disappear completely in the next 25 or 30 years if current climate trends continue. To date it has lost 30% of its volume, and 22% of its surface between 2004 and 2015.
With EFE, AP and Reuters
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