'We stared death in the face'

(ANSA) - Rome, April 27 - One of five Italian mountaineers who escaped Saturday's deadly earthquake in Nepal and made it to a scientific base camp on Mount Everest said Monday their brush with death was harrowing.
    "We stared death in the face," said Vicenza-area native Mario Vielmo, speaking from the Ev-K2-CNR Association's Pyramid International Laboratory-Observatory at 5,050 meters altitude on the Nepal slope of Mount Everest.
    The Pyramid Lab was built in 1987 and has become the hub of an international network of 29 climate-tracking stations.
    The other four Italians who escaped death on the mountain are Claudio Tessarolo and Annalisa Fioretti, both from Vicenza, Sebastiano Valentini di Canazei from Trento, and Marco Sala, from the Belluno area. "We're all fine," Vielmo said. "We've been spared".
    Also on Monday, the Ev-K2-CNR Association - a private scientific association working with Italy's National Research Center (CNR) - said Sherpa mountain guides reported an unconfirmed number of people have been swallowed up by ice crevices that opened between Base Camp and Camp 1 as a result of the earthquake.
    Some two million minors are in need of aid and 30 out of 75 districts of Nepal have been affected by the violent earthquake, said Save the Children NGO.
    As well, the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) has announced it will allocate three million euros in emergency aid to be distributed by the Apostolic Nuncio in Nepal, Monsignor Salvatore Pennacchio.
    Meanwhile, Italy as already earmarked hundreds of thousands of euros for aid to Nepal and has sent a crisis team to the capital of Kathmandu, Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said in Beijing.
    "We'll assess whether the conditions are there for the recovery of cultural assets," he added.
    "But right now we must focus on the missing, the wounded, and the Italians who are stuck (in Nepal) and are trying to leave".