Iolanda Mattevi, a
52-year-old native of Trento, told ANSA on Monday her eyewitness
account of the Nepal earthquake on Saturday, a tragedy whose
death toll has already reached nearly 4,000 and continues to
rise.
"I heard a roar behind me and then I saw a cloud that was
coming down, pushed by a frightening wind. I started to run, but
I was struck by a rain of rocks and snow," she said, describing
the landslide that she survived during the quake that killed two
of her traveling companions, Renzo Benedetti and Marco Pojer.
Mattevi arrived in Nepal in early April with Benedetti,
Pojer, and a third friend, Attilio Dantone, for the trip she'd
"always dreamed of" .
The group was hiking at 3,500 metres in the Langtang Valley
situated north of Kathmandu when the quake struck.
Mattevi said Benedetti and Pojer had left the group to
deliver some medicine to an elderly Nepalese woman and that they
were to join the group later down the trail.
When the quake struck, "our friends were hit full on, while
I found refuge under a rock and that's how I survived," said
Dantone, an Alpine hiking guide who manages a mountain refuge in
Italy's Cembra Valley.
Mattevi is in hospital with a fractured forearm and finger,
and will remain under observation for some days.
A Nepalese guide and two cooks who were accompanying the
Italians on their excursion were also killed in the quake.
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