At two thousand meters, with rubber sandals. Unable either to continue the path, made more difficult by a landslide, or to go back, a group of four people with a medium-sized dog decided to be rescued by mountain rescue. It happened yesterday, the day of August 15th, on the slopes of Mount Rua. As Il Dolomiti recounts, the group set off in the morning from the Pussa refuge, in Val Week, with the idea of making a ring route. Arrived at an altitude of 2,000 meters, the four were blocked along a collapsed section: their shoes slipped on the stones. It was already late afternoon, so the hikers decided to call the mountain rescue. The air ambulance thus landed on the spot health personnel and technicians to recover the four hikers and the dog with the winch.
However, it is not the first time that the emergency services have had to move to recover unwary wayfarers, quite the contrary. It happens more and more frequently. As Giuseppe Dal Ben, general director of Usl1 Dolomiti explained to Corriere delle Alpi, in the first six months of 2023 37,254 calls to 118 with 7,812 missions, of which 58 with helicopters. Among the 651 people who asked for help, 44% are hikers, i.e. simple walkers. Of these, 14.6% get into trouble “due to incapacity”, 7.4% because they lose their bearings, 2.8% because they let themselves be caught in bad weather. With a similar percentage of people, they ask to be met “because they are late”.
Relief, in short, not strictly medical. “The CNSAs volunteers or the Falco 1 and Falco 2 helicopters pick you up because you’re in trouble and most of the time they take you to your car or hotel, rather than to the hospital. At this point it is obvious that the hiker pays for his inexperience. And the bill is salty” explained director Dal Ben. Since 2020, the Healthcare Company has issued 1,036 invoices for an amount of 2 million and 22 thousand euros.
And in the first seven months of this year alone, Dal Ben’s administrators have detached 164 invoices for 409,156 euros. Until the end of last month, foreigners represented the majority, with 54% of the interventions.
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