220 Die as Dam Breaks in Italy, Burying Alps Hotels

A rain-soaked earthen dam high in the Italian Alps collapsed today, sending a huge wall of water and mud crashing through four tourist hotels and 20 homes and leaving 220 people dead.

Civil Defense Minister Giuseppe Zamberletti said 78 bodies had been recovered and the toll could rise above 220 in the disaster in the Fiemme Valley region of northern Italy’s Dolomite Mountains.

“I saw the end of the world,” said one sobbing survivor. “I saw a white wall coming toward me. I couldn’t tell if it was fire or what.”

Zamberletti, who flew to the scene from Rome, said 120 of those missing were guests in the stricken hotels, situated in an area dotted with mountain lakes beneath snow-capped peaks of the Dolomites.

4th Hotel Damaged

The Civil Protection Ministry in Rome said the three hotels--the Erika, the Stava and the Miramonti--were destroyed. A fourth, the Dolomiti, was partly damaged.

A breakdown of the hotel guests’ nationalities was not available. In this season, the region is filled with vacationers, mainly Italians and Northern Europeans.

Six people were found unhurt in the sea of mud and debris, and 15 others had been injured, two of them seriously, Zamberletti said.

The area had been inundated with rain for several days this week, but the weather was clear and sunny when the dam collapsed.

190 Miles From Milan

Rescue workers and soldiers brought in by helicopter struggled through mud and debris hunting for victims of the dam collapse and flood, which occurred in the village of Stava, about 190 miles northeast of Milan.

Television footage taken from the air after the disaster showed a huge swath of gray-brown mud and debris slicing through the bright green mountain pastures and forests.

Huge evergreen trees were stripped bare and tossed like match sticks in every direction. Overturned cars, their wheels poking out of the mud, dotted the scene.

One survivor was buried under the mud for half an hour before he was rescued.

“I heard a great roar,” he said from his hospital bed. “I tried to hide but I was swept away by the debris.”

Wave as High as 130 Feet

State-run RAI-TV said the wave of water, mud, trees and debris reached as high as 130 feet.

Thunderstorms had swollen mountain streams in the area of the dam, located at an altitude of around 4,000 feet. The closest major city, Bolzano, is 29 miles away from the collapsed dam.

An earlier dam disaster, on Oct. 9, 1963, occurred 30 miles east of Stava. The side of a mountain crashed into a huge artificial lake behind the Vaiont dam, sending the lake into the valley and killing 1,917 people.

Police Close Roads

Rescue workers rushed to the disaster scene today from as far away as Tuscany, in central Italy. Police closed roads to allow access by rescue squads and heavy earth-moving equipment.

Alma Bernard, who owns a hotel in Tesero, about a mile from the disaster site, said, “Many families were wiped out with their houses, and earth and mud cover the village.”