As of: February 10, 2024, 12:01 p.m
By: Johannes Welte
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A large rock avalanche thundered onto the Brenner motorway in South Tyrol on Monday evening.
Several cars were hit.
Miraculously, no one was seriously injured.
Klausen – A series of rock falls have been making the Italian Alps unsafe for weeks.
On Monday evening, a rockslide thundered onto the Brenner motorway in South Tyrol between Chiusa and Bolzano.
Stone avalanche thunders onto the Brenner motorway near South Tyrol - hitting several cars
At around 6:08 p.m., in the middle of rush-hour traffic, rocks, earth and tree trunks came loose from a slope and crashed into both lanes of the A22 Brenner motorway near Atzwang in both directions.
According to the South Tyrol Fire Brigade Association, several vehicles were damaged and one person was slightly injured.
However, the highway was reopened in both directions after a short closure.
“Behind him, stones crashed onto the road” – the driver fled into the tunnel as the stones were already raining down
According to the portal stol.it
, the German driver (78) of a white small car
narrowly escaped the falling rocks.
“He managed to escape into a tunnel in time when small stones were already raining down on his car.
Behind him the large stones crashed onto the road,” it says.
Some of the boulders were so large that a direct hit would certainly have had tragic consequences.
However, the car's airbag opened, it is said, and the driver suffered minor injuries and a mild shock.
He was taken to the hospital in Bolzano.
Two truck drivers who were traveling in the south lane at the time of the rockfall managed to drive over the smaller rocks just in time or avoid them without any serious consequences.
A firefighter examines the rocks that crashed onto the Brenner motorway in South Tyrol.
© Facebook/Klausen Fire Department
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The cause of rock falls on the Brenner motorway is apparently extreme temperature fluctuations
The cause of the rock fall is likely to be the extreme temperature fluctuations of the past few days.
“It's no wonder given the current temperature fluctuations - one day it's 15 degrees, the next day it's minus 10. It's no surprise that the rock is breaking,”
stol.it
quotes one of the firefighters.
It took an hour until the scene of the accident, not far from the Schlern Ost rest area, was cleared.
Geologists are now supposed to examine the accident site.
Just a few days ago, a rockfall on the border between Trentino and Veneto hit roads, rails and a cycle path.
In recent months, several rock falls and entire mountain falls have rocked the Alps in Austria and Italy.
Most recently, two powerful rock avalanches occurred on Lake Garda.
Most recently, a rock broke out of a wall on the Birnhorn near Zell am See.