Hope flickers as Italy avalanche survivors tell of trauma

PENNE, Italy: Survivors of Italy’s avalanche disaster on Sunday recounted how they ate snow to stay hydrated and sung to keep their spirits up while huddling in pitch black, cramped cavities in the mangled wreckage of the Hotel Rigopiano.

Their traumatic tales emerged as rescuers said they hoped to find some of the 23 people still unaccounted for, more than 48 hours after they last detected signs of life in the icy ruins.

“Even if there are no signs of life, you could drill through a wall and suddenly there’d be contact. That’s what happened with the other survivors,” said firefighters spokesman Luca Cari.

A Senegalese man who worked at the hotel was added to the list of missing after a statement by one of the survivors. He had not been staff lists and no friends or family had reported him as missing.

The avalanche hit the hotel at dusk Wednesday with a force police have calculated as the equivalent of 4,000 fully-loaded articulated lorries hurtling down a steep slope at 100 kilometres per hour.

Four days later, rescue teams were working round the clock with only two-hour rest breaks to ensure the first responders most familiar with the layout maximise their time on site. The risk of another avalanche remained high, as snow and fog continued to hamper the rescue effort in the mountains of central Italy.

Cari said he was confident some rooms at the back of the hotel were intact because of the protection they had from a thick wall.

“The problem is getting to them,” he said. “The holes we are climbing down into are narrow, and then we have to break through very thick walls to get into rooms, hoping to find someone inside.”

The survivors extracted so far, five adults and four children, were trapped for 40 hours before rescuers made contact. — AFP