At least six folks died and eight have been injured after a piece of a glacier collapsed in Italy’s Alps on Sunday, mentioned Walter Milan, a spokesman for Italy’s National Alpine and Speleological Rescue Corps.
A deluge of snow, ice and rock on the Marmolada mountain group, the tallest of the Dolomites, overran a well-liked summit route, the place a variety of alpinists had been rope climbing, the emergency service for the Veneto area posted on Twitter.
The victims’ names and nationalities weren’t but identified, Mr. Milan mentioned. Several helicopters have been reportedly on the scene. Eighteen folks have been evacuated, and emergency crews have been checking parked automobiles to find out if folks have been nonetheless lacking.
Mr. Milan mentioned that it was the most important accident of its variety on the mountain in a long time. High temperatures in latest days may have contributed by accelerating the melting of the ice, Mr. Milan mentioned, including that it was a really complicated phenomenon with many components at play.
In latest days, Mr. Milan mentioned, the mountain had skilled document temperatures. The accident got here as a warmth wave has scorched elements of Europe for a number of weeks.
The results of world warming on the Marmolada glacier, referred to as the queen of the Dolomites, have been unfolding for years, with the glacier shrinking at a quick tempo.
Between 2004 and 2015 the amount of the glacier shrank by 30 p.c, in line with a 2019 research by Italy’s National Research Council and worldwide universities. If the development continues, the glacier will disappear within the subsequent 25 to 30 years, the analysis predicted.
A number of days earlier than the accident, Carlo Budel, the keeper of a lodge on high of the glacier, posted a video of it on Facebook, saying that the glacier was in dangerous situation. “Poor Marmolada glacier,” he wrote within the caption. “This year this glacier is going to get such a blow.”