Thunderstorms hampered Monday the search for more than a dozen hikers who remained unaccounted for a day after a huge chunk of an Alpine glacier in Italy broke off, sending an avalanche of ice, snow and rocks down the slope.
ROME — Officials put the known death toll at seven.
Fugatti raised the possibility that there might be persons whose families don’t know their status since they might be on holiday and only check in with relatives at vacation’s end. Looking grim, he demanded that action be taken so such a tragedy doesn’t happen again. “This is a drama that certainly has some unpredictability,” Draghi said, echoing several experts who said an avalanche triggered by a glacier’s breakup couldn’t be forecast.
The detached portion of glacier was massive, estimated at 200 meters wide, 80 meters tall and 60 meters deep. Zaia likened the avalanche to an “apartment building block of ice with debris and Cyclopean masses of rock.” What caused a pinnacle of the glacier to break off and thunder down the slope at a speed estimated by experts at around 300 kph , wasn’t immediately known.Jacopo Gabrieli, a polar sciences researcher at Italy’s state-run CNR research center, noted that the long heat wave, spanning May and June, was the hottest in northern Italy in that period for nearly 20 years.
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