Four dead after boat overturns on Italy’s Lake Maggiore

Four people, including members of the Italian and Israeli intelligence services, died when a boat overturned on Lake Maggiore in strong winds, officials said on Monday.

Published: 29 May 2023 09:09 CEST
Updated: 30 May 2023 08:25 CEST

Four people were found dead after a tourist boat sank on Lake Maggiore on Sunday, May 28th. Photo by GABRIEL BOUYS / AFP.

The boat tipped over on Sunday evening off Lisanza, at the southern end of the lake in northern Italy, after the weather suddenly turned stormy.

“The bodies of four people have been recovered,” fire brigade spokesman Luca Cari told AFP.

Israel’s foreign ministry said one of the dead was a former member of the country’s security forces in his fifties.

Two others were Italian, a 62-year-old man and a 53-year-old woman who both worked in the intelligence services, Italy’s security services said.

“The two employees, belonging to the intelligence department, were taking part in a convivial meeting organised to celebrate the birthday of one of the group,” it said.

Media reports said the fourth victim was a 50-year-old Russian woman, the partner of the boat’s captain.

President of the Lombardy region Attilio Fontana said on Sunday a “whirlwind” had caused the 16-metre-long boat to overturn.

Firefighters on Sunday said 19 people had survived the accident, with media reports suggesting some had been picked up by passing boats while others swam to shore.

The boat had been carrying both Italian and foreign tourists, and it sank quickly, taking one of the victims with it, according to reports.

A firefighters’ video showed a search and rescue helicopter flying over choppy waters, where chairs and other debris could be seen floating.

Lake Maggiore, which lies on the south side of the Alps, is the second largest lake in Italy and a popular tourist destination.

Initial reports that some of the tourists involved were British were denied by an embassy official.

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Elsewhere in Switzerland, a man was found dead in a hotel in Saas-Grund in the southwest canton of Valais, police said, adding that he was probably taken by surprise by a sudden rapid rise in floodwater.

Images published in the online publication 20minuten showed parts of the town covered in a thick layer of mud and rocks.

Another man is also missing in Valais, police said.

In France, three people in their 70s and 80s died in the northeastern Aube region on Saturday when a falling tree crushed the car they were travelling in, the local authority told AFP.

A fourth passenger was in critical care, it added.

Switzerland’s civil security services said “several hundred” people were evacuated in the southern canton of Valais and roads closed after the Rhone and its tributaries overflowed in different locations.

The situation in Valais was “under control” Sunday, Frederic Favre, the official responsible for civil security, told a press conference, but he warned that it would remain “fragile” for the next several days.

Emergency services were assessing the best way to evacuate 300 people who had arrived for a football tournament in the mountain town of Peccia, while almost 70 more were being evacuated from a holiday camp in the village of Mogno.

The poor weather was making rescue work particularly difficult, police had said earlier, with several valleys in the southern cantons of Ticino and Valais near the border with Italy, inaccessible and cut off from the electricity network.

In Ticino, some 400 people — including 40 children from a holiday camp — had to be evacuated from risk areas and taken to civil protection centres.

The federal alert system also said part of the canton was without drinking water.

Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis, who is from Ticino, said the repeated disasters “have touched us deeply”.

It’s the worst flooding experienced in the canton since 2000 when 13 people were killed in a mudslide which destroyed the village of Gondo.

Scientists say climate change driven by human activity is increasing the severity, frequency and length of extreme weather events such as floods and storms.

Italy flooding

In northern Italy, Piedmont and the Aosta Valley also suffered flooding and mudslides, though no deaths were reported.

Firefighters in Piedmont announced Sunday morning that they had carried out 80 operations to rescue people in difficulty.

A mudslide temporarily blocked a regional road to the ski resort of Cervinia in the Aosta Valley, a semi-autonomous region located along the border with France and Switzerland.

A river which burst its banks caused significant damage to the centre of the town where several streets were flooded.

A mudslide blocked access to Cogne, a village of 1,300 people in the Aosta Valley, where 90 millimetres of rainfall was recorded in a six-hour period on Saturday.

At the European football championships in Germany, a match between Germany and Denmark Saturday evening was interrupted for almost half an hour because of heavy rain and lighting.

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