There may be around 10 people missing, Civil Protection official Gianpaolo Bottasin said, according to the online edition of Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. But Bottacin later told state television that it was not yet possible to provide a firm number. The glacier, in the Marmolada range, is the largest in the Dolomites mountains in northeastern Italy, and people ski there in the winter. But the glacier has been melting rapidly in recent years. Experts at Italy’s state-run research center CNR, which has a polar science institute, say the glacier will no longer exist in the next 25-30 years and that most of its volume has already disappeared. The Mediterranean basin, shared by southern Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa, has been labeled by UN experts as a “climate change hot spot”, likely to suffer heat waves and water shortages, among other consequences. As of Sunday afternoon, officials were still working to determine how many hikers were in the area when the ice avalanche hit, said Walter Milan, a spokesman for the national Alpine rescue corps who gave a toll on the dead and injured. Italian marmalade. Giovanni Mereghetti / UCG / Universal Images Group via Getty Images Rescuers were checking license plates in the parking lot as part of checks to determine how many people might be missing, a process that could take hours, Milan told The Associated Press by phone. “We saw dead (people) and huge pieces of ice, rock,” exhausted rescuer Luigi Felicetti told Italian state television. The nationalities or ages of the dead were not immediately available, Milan said. Of the eight survivors who were hospitalized, two were in serious condition, authorities said. The fast-moving avalanche “came down with a roar that could be heard a long way off,” local online media site ildolomiti.it reported. Earlier, the National Alpine and Cave Rescue Corps tweeted that at least five helicopters and rescue dogs were involved in the search of the affected area of Marmolada Peak. Temporarily, the search for other victims or missing people has been halted while rescuers assess the risk of more of the glacier breaking off, Walter Cainelli told state television after carrying out a rescue mission with a search dog. Rescuers said chunks of ice kept falling. Early in the evening a light rain began to fall. The SUEM dispatch service, which is based in the nearby Veneto region, said 18 people who were above the area where the ice hit would be evacuated by the Alpine rescue corps. But Milan said some on the slope may be able to get down on their own, including using the summit cable car. SUEM said the avalanche consisted of “snow, ice and rock spillage”. The detached portion is known as a serac, or ice peak. Marmolada, rising to around 3,300 meters (about 11,000 feet), is the highest peak in the eastern Dolomites, offering stunning views of other Alpine peaks. The Alpine Rescue Service said in a tweet that the section was interrupted near Punta Rocca (Rock Point), “along the route normally used to reach the summit”. It was not immediately clear what caused the chunk of ice to break off and hurtle down the mountainside. However, the intense heat wave that has hit Italy since late June could be a factor. “The temperatures of these days clearly had an influence” on the partial collapse of the glacier, Maurizio Fugatti, president of the province of Trento, which borders Marmolada, told Sky TG24. But Milan stressed that the high heat, which has soared unusually above 10 C (50 F) on top of Marmolada in recent days, was only one possible factor in Sunday’s tragedy. “There are so many factors that could be involved,” Milan said. Avalanches are generally unpredictable, he said, and the effect of heat on a glacier “is even more impossible to predict.” In separate comments on Italian state television, Milan called the recent temperatures “extremely hot” for the summit. “It’s clearly something out of the ordinary.” The injured were airlifted to several hospitals in the Trentino-Alto Adige and Veneto regions, according to rescue services.
