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The heavy snowfalls in recent days have caused two deaths in Val Senales, in South Tyrol. An avalanche struck and killed the former president of the Raiffeisen bank Michael gruener, 65, and his wife Monika gamper, 52 years. The well-known lawyer from Bolzano, an experienced mountain skier, was originally from Val Senales and ran the Raiffeisen Landesbank for 23 years, until last June Hanspeter Felder took over as the new president.
The large avalanche broke at about 2,200 meters, while the pair were just below the top of Klosterkreuz, above the town of Certosa di Senales. Some witnesses raised the alarm and the rescue car started at around 1:40 p.m.
Search and rescue operations were initially severely hampered by thick fog that prevented the ‘Pelikan 1’ and ‘Pelikan 3’ helicopters from taking off. Later, the visibility improved and the rescuers were transported by helicopter with the ‘Pelikan 2’ to the indicated point. Gruener was extracted dead from the snow mass. His wife passed away shortly afterwards despite several attempts to revive her.
The operations were attended by more than 100 people from the Senales, Laces and Merano provincial mountain rescue, the volunteer firefighters from Val Senales and the police. The Austrian helicopter ‘Alpin 2’ from the nearby Oetztal also participated
These days, after recent heavy snowfalls, the avalanche hazard across South Tyrol is grade 3 “high” on a scale from 1 (“weak”) to 5 (“very strong”) .
In the same area a little over a year ago, on December 28, 2019, a 35-year-old woman, her daughter and another child, both seven years old, all Germans, were killed in an avalanche with a head of 150 meters while they were unemployed. skiing on the section that from the Schmuggler Scharte (‘Forcella dei smuggandieri’) leads to the Teufelsegg refuge.
