‘Saw End of the World,’ Survivor of Flood Says : At Least 220 Are Swept to Their Deaths When Earthen Dam Collapses in Italian Mountains

An earthen dam high in the mountains of northern Italy collapsed Friday, releasing a huge wall of water that crushed houses and tourist hotels and killed more than 200 people, officials said.

“I saw the end of the world,” one unidentified survivor said in an interview with the state-run RAI television network.

Civil Defense Minister Giuseppe Zamberletti said at a news conference in Rome that at least 220 people were known dead in the disaster in the Val di Fiemme region of northern Italy’s Dolomite mountains.

Searching for Victims

Rescue workers and soldiers brought in by helicopter struggled through mud and debris hunting for victims of the dam collapse and flood, which occurred near the town of Cavalese, 13 miles northeast of Milan.

Six hours after the disaster at 7 p.m. (10 a.m. PDT), the Civil Defense Ministry said 78 bodies had been recovered by civilian and military rescue workers battling deep mud and debris.

About 20 houses and four hotels were crushed in the village of Stava, nestled at 4,000 feet in the Dolomites.

RAI said only 20 seconds elapsed between the time the dam collapsed and the 150-foot-wide front of water and mud flattened the homes and four hotels.

Rescued From Mud

Officials said that 15 people were dug out alive from the mud, but that it could be hours before the identities of all the victims were known.

RAI said the wave of water, mud, trees and debris reached as high as 120 feet.

Film taken from the air and telecast by RAI showed an empty artificial lake and 3 1/2-mile-long stream of mud into the valley. The dam was completely washed away.

“Many families were wiped out with their houses,” said Alma Bernard, who owns a hotel in Tesero, about 1 1/2 miles from the disaster scene.

“Earth and mud cover the village,” she said in a telephone interview.

One survivor, identified only as Pietro, told Italian reporters that he saw his 48-year-old brother, Lucio, climb up a tree to escape the tidal wave of mud, “but then a second wave carried him away.”

Thunderstorms had swollen mountain streams in the area and put cracks in the dam, built about 20 years ago to filter waste water from a local mine for fluorite, a mineral used for making glass. The closest major city, Bolzano, is 29 miles from the collapsed dam.

Fears arose that 50 Boy Scouts from Milan, aged 13 to 15, might have become victims, but it was later learned that they had pitched their tents in another area.

The local tourist authority said about 170 people were registered in the four hotels, located beneath snow-capped peaks of the Dolomites near the Austrian border. The Erika, the Stava and the Miramonti were hit, while a wing of the Dolomiti was damaged.

Rescue workers headed for 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.

The Italian news agency ANSA quoted Giuliano Amato, a top aide to Premier Bettino Craxi, as saying that “the first reports (of casualties) give terrible figures.”

The affected area is between Trento and Bolzano in the Val di Fiemme. In this season, the region is filled with vacationers, mainly Italians and northern Europeans.

Another dam disaster, on Oct. 9, 1963, occurred 30 miles due 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.