Europe Hunts for Missing After Fierce Storms

On a blustery night last Friday, a dozen experienced spelunkers dropped into a cave in the Italian Alps near the border with France. They emerged Sunday to find five feet of snow on the ground and a blizzard blowing.

Three of the spelunkers are safe, but the other nine are among the missing and feared dead Tuesday in the wake of savage early winter storms sweeping Western Europe.

There were reports of at least 11 dead in Britain, France and Spain, including two French teen-agers killed when a rockslide crushed their car as they returned from a ski trip.

Among the missing were eight fishermen aboard a Moroccan boat that collided with a South Korean freighter in 25-foot seas off northern Spain. Inland, an overnight blizzard snarled transport, closed schools and businesses and isolated hundreds of villages.

Ten climbers were missing in Spain. Rescuers saved four climbers in Spain’s Sierra Nevada range, while Italian police found seven skiers trapped in mountain refuges.

Near the northwestern Italian city of Cuneo near the French border, though, avalanche dogs and helicopters found no trace of the nine spelunkers, who had split into three groups to find their way down from the mountain Sunday night.

Storms brought high wind and snow from Britain to France, Spain, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and much of Italy, disrupting air, train and road travel. Italian police said 34 people had died and more than 800 others had been injured during the weekend in traffic accidents.

Ferries were canceled, trains ran hours late across Europe and traffic was paralyzed at the Brenner Pass between Italy and Austria, with vehicles backed up for more than 15 miles.

Snow fell in London, Paris, Madrid and Milan. It meant good fortune for Alpine ski resorts after several straight mild winters, but many sites were unreachable.

The storm-swollen Adriatic overflowed into parts of Trieste and flooded much of Venice, including tourist-beloved St. Mark’s Square. The Arno rose alarmingly in Florence.

Romans squished through a fifth consecutive day of heavy rain Tuesday. Underpasses flooded, sewers overflowed, and in apartments badly heated or lacking electricity because of storm damage, cold claimed the lives of four elderly Romans, police said.

Snow fell on Mt. Vesuvius overlooking the southern city of Naples. In Naples Bay, a cargo ship broke from its moorings in 60-m.p.h. winds and was reported adrift and sinking. Flooding in the Naples region of Campania caused millions of dollars of damage to the truck-garden crops of farmers, who, like all Italians, had been bemoaning a three-year drought.