Six days after the Marmolada glacier accident, the eleventh and last missing mountaineer was found dead and rescued. Nevertheless, the emergency services want to continue their search for the time being.
Barely a week after the glacier broke off in the Dolomites, the last missing climber was found and found dead.
The number of victims of the accident rose to eleven. On Saturday, the emergency services assumed there were no other people under the ice and boulder masses on Mount Marmolada in the northern Italian Alps. Thanks to DNA comparisons, the last five alpinists who had been reported missing were matched to the bodies.
The dead are six men and three women from Italy and two Czech climbers. According to media reports, the youngest victim was a 22-year-old man from Vicenza. Eight people were injured. Among them are a man and a woman from Germany who are being treated in a clinic in the province of Belluno. The hospital said her condition was stable.
Mission continues
Maurizio Fugatti, the regional president of Trentino-Alto Adige, announced that the search teams would continue to work on the mountain massif. From the next few days, three teams will work in three different zones of the avalanche cone. So far, the search had been limited to one area at a time. Dogs were also used. The forces are looking for more body parts and other personal material from the accident victims, said Fugatti.
In the course of this week, six dead were initially identified by relatives. The other five bodies could only be matched to the missing persons through DNA comparisons. These were carried out by a special unit of the Carabinieri. “At this point in time, we do not assume that other people were involved,” said Carabinieri Captain Giampietro Lago.
The dead, laid out in the Canazei ice stadium below the Marmolada, could be handed over to their families if the investigating public prosecutor allows this. Lago assumed that this would happen soon after the DNA analysis was completed.
day of mourning ordered
The Mayor of Canazei had ordered a day of mourning for Saturday, in which all the municipalities of the Val di Fassa took part. A minute’s silence was scheduled for 6 p.m. At the same time, a funeral mass should begin in the parish church of Canazei, which will be celebrated by the Archbishop of Trento, Lauro Tisi, among others.
Last Sunday, a massive chunk broke off the glacier on the north side of the Marmolada and fell into the valley together with water and debris at a speed of 300 kilometers per hour. He caught the alpinists who were on the normal route and swept some of them away. According to experts, the high temperatures of the past few days and weeks, which are likely to be related to climate change, were one of the reasons for the accident.
