(Canazei) No sign of life under the mass of rock and snow, but body parts, rings and tattoos to identify the victims: the gruesome search continued on Tuesday on the slopes of Marmolada, the highest peak of the Italian Alps, two days after the collapse of part of its glacier weakened by climate change and record temperatures.
Updated yesterday at 1:03 p.m.
The disaster has so far left seven dead and eight injured, one of whom was released from hospital on Tuesday. The number of people reported missing by their relatives, but whose presence when the glacier broke is not confirmed at this stage, fell on Tuesday from a dozen to five, all of Italian nationality.
A burning chapel has been set up within the grounds of the ice rink in Canazei, the locality downstream from the glacier where the crisis unit coordinating the research is also based. The families and loved ones of the victims can thus pay tribute to them.
Among the injured, two Germans, a 67-year-old man and a 58-year-old woman, are still in serious condition.
Rescuers have deployed drones equipped with thermal cameras and helicopters to fly over the area, but they hope to be able to return to the glacier on foot from Wednesday, the president of the Trento region, Maurizio Fugatti, said during the meeting. of a press conference Tuesday evening in Canazei.
Radars and canine units
Meanwhile, the macabre work of identifying mountaineers who perished on the Marmolada continues. “Important discoveries, not just bones, are first photographed, then recovered and taken care of by a helicopter” and transported to Canazei where they are “listed and stored in a cold room”, specified Maurizio Dellantonio, citing in particular “bones with pieces of flesh, a piece of hand with a ring, tattoos, anything that can help identify a person”, including shoes, backpacks or ice axes.
Specialized technicians are also mobilized to install near a refuge “radar capable of detecting very fast movements, such as avalanches, and slower ones, such as landslides”, indicated Nicola Casagli on the spot. professor of applied geology at the University of Florence quoted by the AGI agency.
The disaster, which occurred the day after a record temperature of 10°C at the top of the glacier, in the midst of an early heat wave on the Italian peninsula, “symbolizes the so many tragedies that unchecked climate change is causing in so many regions of the world. “commented Italian President Sergio Mattarella on Tuesday.
Two Czechs among the victims
Only three of the seven mountaineers killed have been identified, but their nationalities have not been released by Italian authorities. The Czech Foreign Ministry nevertheless confirmed to AFP that two of its nationals were among them.
The public prosecutor’s office in Trento has opened an investigation to determine the causes of this tragedy. Some families accuse the authorities of having left the glacier open when the climbing conditions were obviously perilous.
“Why did no one warn on Saturday that the water was seeping under the glacier? Why didn’t they stop people from going up? “asked Tuesday the sister of a missing Italian woman, quoted by the Ansa agency. “If someone is responsible, we will go all the way,” she added.
“This is an exceptional event, if not unique. There were also alpine guides on the glacier who know the situation well,” replied Maurizio Fugatti.
La Marmolada, nicknamed “the queen of the Dolomites”, is the largest glacier in this mountain range in northern Italy, which is part of the Alps.
According to the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published on 1er March, the melting of ice and snow is one of the ten major threats caused by global warming, disrupting ecosystems and threatening certain infrastructures.