Lake Maggiore: boat capsizes and four people die – Panorama

The shore was in sight, and perhaps that’s why the birthday party felt safe on Lake Maggiore, even when the sky was clouding over and the wind was picking up. The authorities must now determine why exactly the captain did not head for the bank in time despite the storm warning, although according to eyewitness reports the storm could already be seen and heard from the east.

But the party ship with 23 tourists on board was suddenly hit by a gust of wind and capsized on Whit Sunday at around 7 p.m. in front of the municipality of Lisanza, a district of Sesto Calende in the very south of Italy’s second largest lake.

The boat sank immediately to a depth of 15 meters, most of the guests were picked up by other boats in the heavy rain or were able to swim to the shore 150 meters away, two women and two men died – three tourists and the wife of the boat owner.

The Coast Guard and Fire Department were with boats, a helicopter and divers on duty. The body of the fourth victim could only be recovered from the bottom of the lake on Monday. According to the President of the Region of Lombardy, Attilio Fontana, the “very serious incident” was triggered by a “tornoon”, occasionally there was also talk of a “tornado”. This is technically exaggerated, weather experts prefer to speak of gusts of thunderstorms.

It is true, however, that a normal storm should not normally capsize a 16 meter boat. Rather, it was probably a single gust of wind that shot out of a thunderstorm at more than one hundred kilometers an hour.

Such sudden events cannot be predicted, but the thunderstorms that fuel them can. According to meteorologists, the weather models had also predicted a violent storm for Lake Maggiore on Sunday evening.


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