Severe Storm and Devastating Debris Flows in Vinschgau

Tyrol.

Morter, 17 June. Yesterday was a day of terror and mourning for the entire surrounding area. Around 4 o'clock in the afternoon thunder began, black clouds gathered from all sides, and immediately afterwards such heavy rain and hail commenced that within half an hour, from Schlanders to the Latsch bridge, debris flows descended from all small side valleys on both the left and the right. The hamlets of Goldrain and Vezan were particularly hard hit. In the latter, a human life was even lost, namely the reverend beneficed priest. As the thunderstorm approached, he wished to hold the weather blessing and went to church with the sacristan for that purpose; yet in just a few moments he was overwhelmed by the debris flow along with the entire church, and only late in the evening did rescuers succeed in pulling the victim dead from the sacristy through an opening made from the outside. The sacristan, who well foresaw the danger and had tried in vain to persuade the beneficed priest to leave, saved himself only with the greatest effort into the tower. The church and the church vestments are utterly ruined. One can imagine the sorrow of the unfortunate inhabitants of Vezan, who within half an hour lost their highly revered beneficed priest, the church, and most of their property, along with the crops that had justified the finest hopes. No less severe was the damage inflicted by the debris flows in Goldrain. A substantial part of the land is devastated; several head of cattle perished (in one farmhouse two oxen together with the wagon were swept away from the threshing floor), and several people could only be rescued at the risk of their lives; among them a 95-year-old man who, before the storm broke, had been lying in the sun on a hill and, seized by the debris flow, was carried past hills and walls down to the Vezan meadows below the road, where two brave men from Morter, Johann Burger and Sebastian Kind, finally succeeded with great difficulty and mortal peril in pulling him alive and uninjured from the mud. Only an official judicial assessment will be able to determine more precisely the losses sustained, which cannot yet be fully measured.