The three boys swept away by the flood of the Natisone river in Premariacco, between Udine and the Slovenian border, are still missing. The three reached on foot a small island of gravel in the middle of the river. Then the water rose and they were stuck. A video shows them hugging each other so as not to be carried away by the flood. The firefighters attempted to save them by throwing a rope from above, which the boys were unable to grab. Then they disappeared into the waters. They are three young people: a 21-year-old resident in Friuli, a 23-year-old friend of hers of Romanian origins and a 25-year-old compatriot of hers. A BMW car with a Romanian license plate was found on the river bank. The two friends live in Campoformido. The firefighters also tried to use a ladder stretched over the river to save them. Without results.
The rescue attempt
According to reconstructions, the car with the three boys arrived at 1.20pm at the Roman Bridge in Premariacco. At 1.35pm the first alert went out: it was launched by the driver of a municipal school bus who saw them in the river. At 1.50pm, when the rescuers arrive, they are already knee-deep in water. Then at 2pm the attempt with the ladder which fails by a hair’s breadth. Then in the video we see the boys trying to grab the ropes and one of them narrowly missing it, until the flood takes them away.
The research is confident that the boys may have managed to cling to some branches and perhaps get closer to the river bank. «We are not in a period of floods, but anyone who lives here and knows this river, which can record a very rapid increase in water level just like a torrent, would never have dared to go down to the riverbed on a day like this» , the mayor of Premariacco, Michele De Sabata, tells Corriere della Sera.
Who are the three missing boys
“Those kids probably couldn’t resist its attractive force, like many people at other times of the year, without realizing the risk they were running,” he concludes. The relief base camp was set up in Orsaria. Before the driver, it was the boys themselves who raised the alarm. Currently two hundred people have searched the area to search for the three missing people with helicopters, dinghies, civil protection and mountain rescue men. In these waters there are eddies and cavities.
The Natisone is often subject to flash floods, as warned by the signs that prohibit swimming in the area due to the danger of drowning. “The searches will continue tonight and as long as necessary in the next few days,” Andrea D’Odorico, who coordinates the searches, said yesterday. «The weather situation is not in favor of research. Severe conditions are also expected in the next few hours. The Natisone river is in flood, has a very strong current, is torrential in nature and has many bends, in which the missing could have been stuck.”
