CHURCH IN VALMALENCO (SONDRIO) It was sunny yesterday afternoon in Valmasino. Then suddenly the sky darkened, a thick and intense rain fell, lasting only a few minutes. A summer downpour with dramatic consequences: three deaths, including a ten-year-old girl, and a five-year-old boy hospitalized in very serious conditions. In the tragedy he lost both parents. The car in which he was traveling with his father, his mother and a girlfriend, a white Suzuki jeep, was overwhelmed by a river of mud and stones, thrown from the bridge he was crossing and dragged into the bed of the Mallero stream for a hundred meters .
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The victims
happened yesterday shortly after 5 pm on the road that leads from Chiesa in Valmalenco to Chiareggio, the last hamlet of the valley, 1,600 meters above sea level, one of the most famous and popular places for tourists who flock to Valtellina these days. The victims lived in the province of Varese, in Comabbio: Gianluca Pasqualone, 45, of Lazio origins, worked in a glass processing company, his partner Silvia Brocca, 41, assistant in a dental office, Alabama Guizzardi, from Gallarate, 10 years old yesterday, and little Leo, now in serious condition. The group of friends was going up to one of the many restaurants in the area to celebrate the birthday of the girl, daughter of a couple who survived the landslide. They rode in the car in front of the one overwhelmed by the mudslide. They heard the deafening noise and then the emptiness behind them. When they realized what was happening they rushed into the riverbed, while the mountain continued to vomit mud and stones, they tried to dig with their bare hands to extract their child from the rubble. I will never forget the screams of that dad, says Jacopo Merizzi, mountain guide, manager of a hotel in the area, among the first to arrive at the accident site. And Merizzi himself to explain what could have happened. The landslide descended into the Nevasco valley, the scene of numerous avalanches in winter – he says -. The rain must have caused the detachment of some boulders that ended up in the stream. A reservoir was created which then overflowed taking away the cars that were passing on the bridge at that moment.
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The condolences
In addition to the occupants of the Suzuki – the 5-year-old child was taken by helicopter to the Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital in Bergamo – a 49-year-old, hospitalized in Lecco for a trauma to the abdomen, and who is not in danger of life, was also hit by the casting. Three Areu helicopters, two ambulances, firefighters, carabinieri, mountain rescue and finance police intervened on the spot. Only after interminable minutes, when the heavy rain stopped falling and the scene was shown to the rescuers in all its horror, was it possible to try to rescue the victims: the father and the mother trapped in the car, the dying son, the child who he was no longer breathing. A night helicopter was also flying from Brescia for the transport of personnel specialized in searches among the rubble. Chiareggio at the moment isolated, the road that leads to the closed hamlet. Unfortunately, landslides are frequent in that area, especially avalanches in winter, but a detachment like this had never happened, the mayor of Chiesa in Valmalenco Renata Petrella despairs. I invite everyone to pray for the victims, their relatives destroyed by pain and the hospitalized child, the message on Facebook from the president of the Lombardy Region Attilio Fontana.
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12 August 2020 (change 12 August 2020 | 23:38)
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