International News

Electronic Telegraph

Tuesday 18 August 1998

Issue 1180

Lake tragedy rescue operation 'was a disgrace'

By Sally Pook in Desenzano, Italy

THE operation to rescue two British families caught in a storm on Lake Garda was condemned by authorities in Italy yesterday as a "disgrace".

Silvio Bonfili, the Italian magistrate who is leading a major inquiry into how Richard Harris, 50, and his two sons died, said he wanted to know why their stricken speedboat was not found until the following day, some 15 hours after it capsized.

The Carabinieri, Italy's paramilitary police, admitted at the weekend that the rescue was unco-ordinated because there is no central body responsible for rescue on the lake, a popular tourist destination.

John Lilley, who had joined the Harrises on the boat with his two children, said yesterday at his home in Aberdeen: "After the boat had overturned I assumed we would be picked up within a couple of hours at the most. But we just waited and waited with the waves crashing around us until it became the worst nightmare of our lives. It is obvious that something went wrong that night and we need to find out why."

Mr Bonfili said yesterday: "This is an extremely serious matter. Of the three people who died, two spent all night clinging to the boat as it was being swept down the lake, and were only found the next day. This means there was a gap of at least 10 hours. It is a disgrace. Lake Garda is big, but it is not the sea."

The authorities in Northern Italy are to question the various rescue services along the the 30-mile-long lake to discover who was alerted and when. They will also investigate why police helicopters were not sent out to search the lake when the boat was reported missing.

The Harris family hired the speedboat at 4 pm last Wednesday together with the Lilleys, whom they had met at their hotel in the resort of Limone, to the north of Lake Garda.

A storm - which had been forecast days earlier - blew up less than an hour later. The four who survived by clinging to the hull of the boat were not found until 8 am the next day, and only then by the pilot of a boat which was cleaning the lake.

Mr Harris, a head teacher from Bedfordshire, and his son Timothy, 13, whose body has still not been found, slipped away into the water during the night. His other son Luke, six, died in the arms of Mr Lilley. Mr Lilley's children, Andrew, 15, and Alison, 13, were rescued.

The investigating magistrate is to question the owners of the boat hire company, based in Limone, to find out how quickly they responded when they knew the boat was missing. The owners went searching themselves for the two families but it is not clear whether they contacted emergency services beforehand which could have gained vital hours. It is also known that police at the southern end of the lake were not alerted until 11.30 that night, a delay of several hours.

Katherine Harris, 42, a teacher who was rescued along with Mr Lilley and his two children, was yesterday still in hospital at Desenzano, where she is being comforted by her mother and brother. Teams continued the search for Timothy Harris's body yesterday but fear it may never be found.

A spokesman for the British consulate in Milan said: "The rescue services have told us that the bottom of the lake has a series of deep holes. There have been previous drowning cases where the body has not been found because it has sunk into one of these holes."

From www.telegraph.co.uk:80