Toll Rises to 14 in Floods, Landslides in Northern Italy

Landslides and floods in northern Italy killed at least 14 people over the weekend and swept away or blocked hundreds of roads, bridges and railroad tracks, officials said Sunday.

Severe flooding that resulted in other deaths also hit Austria and Switzerland, breaking dams and bridges and forcing evacuations.

The Italian state-run RAI broadcast network said dozens of villages and towns were isolated, reachable only by helicopters or on foot.

Dozens of people were missing or injured in Italy, but official figures were lacking. RAI initially said 28 people had died but later lowered that figure to 14.

Heavy rains blamed for the disaster fell for a fourth day in some parts of the afflicted area from Bergamo, east of Milan, to Bolzano, about 155 miles to the northeast near the Swiss border.

Epidemic Feared

Fearing an epidemic, Italian health authorities urged residents to boil drinking water. Thousands of foreign tourists left mountain resorts despite warnings by Civil Defense Ministry officials against unnecessary road travel.

In the village of Tartano, near Sondrio by the Swiss border, a landslide covered the Gran Baita hotel in mud and rocks and toppled an adjacent three-story apartment building Saturday evening.

Vittoria Piobellini and her husband were in the hotel. “I was watching television with my husband next to me, when I saw him carried away by the mud,” she said.

The hotel “was completely destroyed, covered by mud and rocks,” said a paramilitary official in Sondrio who demanded anonymity.

Few victims were identified, and it was not known if any were foreigners, he said.

Death Toll Revised

Local police first said 22 people were killed and 20 injured, but Civil Defense Minister Giuseppe Zamberletti later said 10 people were killed and two were missing.

There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy, and Tartano police could not be reached for comment. But the spokesman for paramilitary police in Sondrio said Zamberletti’s figures were correct.

“Unfortunately, our problems are not over,” said the spokesman. “It’s still raining.”

In Morbegno, down the Adda River valley from Sondrio, a boy who stopped to look at the rising water was swept away and drowned. Sondrio police reported another death in nearby Valditogno.

Sunday was the second anniversary of a dam collapse in the Alps to the east which crushed the hamlet of Stava and killed 269 people.

Last Tuesday, a landslide, also caused by rain, struck an Alpine campground about 140 miles west of Milan near Annecy, France, and killed 23 people.

Swiss Floods, Landslides

In southern Switzerland on Sunday, overflowing rivers and landslides blocked roads and forced evacuation of hundreds of houses and several campgrounds.

Swiss police recovered the bodies of the three occupants of a car that swerved off a rain-swept road in the Grisons mountains and plunged into the Maira river the day before.

In Austria, authorities evacuated 60 people from the western province of Vorarlberg when a dam broke near the Swiss border, and 20 people were evacuated by helicopter in neighboring Tirol when several bridges broke.

The Italian government has mounted a massive rescue effort, deploying 6,825 troops and reservists, 28 helicopters, 240 trucks, earthmoving vehicles and ambulances. They joined thousands of police, firefighters and Alpine guides in searching for victims and ferrying people and food.

The effort was hampered by downed telephone lines and busy circuits caused by calls from outside, police said.

Civil defense officials said that about 1,500 firefighters, police, soldiers, and mountain guides were working under intermittent rain to track down possible victims and rescue stranded parties.

“The situation has improved somewhat because it’s not raining heavily here now,” said Morbegno Mayor Dito Botta. “But the possibility of more landslides is real, and we’ll have to watch for at least two more days.”