Flood Kills 10 Campers in Italy

The rain-swollen waters of a stream swept through a campground filled with disabled campers in the southern region of Calabria before dawn Sunday, killing at least 10 people and injuring dozens as they slept, authorities reported.

Interior Minister Enzo Bianco, who arrived in Calabria in the evening, told reporters that 10 people had died and five were missing at Le Giare campground near the seaside town of Soverato.

The muddy water destroyed the campground’s guest register, complicating the task of accounting for the living, the dead and the missing.

The flood turned the campground, where disabled campers from Calabria and their volunteer aides have gone every summer for seven years, into a sea of mud, flipping over cars, shoving trailers into trees and smashing bungalows.

One of the first victims to be identified was a 52-year-old man with Alzheimer’s disease, the Italian news agency ANSA said. Organizers of the camping trip said the man was the only disabled person among the fatalities.

Another of the dead was 17-year-old Rosario Russo, who was carried hundreds of yards by the raging, muddy water after he helped safely move his father, who uses a wheelchair, to higher ground, ANSA said. Rescuers removed the boy’s body from the tangled branches of an uprooted tree.

Civil defense officials said 44 people were taken to hospitals. The RAI broadcasting network said local newspapers for years have run stories questioning the wisdom of a campground right next to a stream. Magistrates began investigating to see if any laws were violated in running the campground at that location, RAI said.