[ad_1]
At the very least six individuals died and eight had been injured after a piece of a glacier collapsed in Italy’s Alps on Sunday, mentioned Walter Milan, a spokesman for Italy’s Nationwide Alpine and Speleological Rescue Corps.
A deluge of snow, ice and rock on the Marmolada mountain group, the tallest of the Dolomites, overran a preferred summit route, the place a lot 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. A number of helicopters had been reportedly on the scene. Eighteen individuals had been evacuated, and emergency crews had been checking parked vehicles to find out if individuals had been nonetheless lacking.
Mr. Milan mentioned that it was the most important accident of its variety on the mountain in many years. Excessive 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 elements at play.
In latest days, Mr. Milan mentioned, the mountain had skilled report temperatures. The accident got here as a warmth wave has scorched elements of Europe for a number of weeks.
The consequences of world warming on the Marmolada glacier, generally known 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 examine by Italy’s Nationwide Analysis Council and worldwide universities. If the pattern 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 Fb, saying that the glacier was in unhealthy situation. “Poor Marmolada glacier,” he wrote within the caption. “This yr this glacier goes to get such a blow.”
[ad_2]
Source link