Deadly avalanche hits Italy hotel
Dozens feared dead as rescuers dig past walls of snow
There were fears last night for about 30 people missing after an avalanche buried a mountain hotel in an earthquake-hit region of central Italy. The civil protection agency said that they were working to get rescue vehicles to the Hotel Rigopiano through roads covered in metres of snow, joining initial rescue efforts overnight by alpine rescue teams.
“Around 30 people are unaccounted for, between guests and workers at the Hotel Rigopiano in Farindola,” Fabrizio Curcio, head of Italy's civil protection department, told Italian media last night.
The ANSA news agency quoted a rescuer as saying that there were fatalities. Other rescuers said they had been calling out to any survivors but no one had responded.
ANSA also quoted a survivor who said he was saved because he had gone outside to his car to get something when the avalanche hit.
Giampaolo Parete, 38, told doctors that his wife and two children were buried in the avalanche.
He said that the car hadn’t been buried and he waited there for rescuers.
The avalanche covered the threestorey hotel in the central region of Abruzzo on Wednesday. The fourstar spa hotel is about 45km from the coastal city of Pescara.
Earthquakes hit the region on Wednesday, including one with a 5.7 magnitude, but it wasn’t immediately clear if the temblors triggered the avalanche.
Mountain rescue teams reached the hotel by skis around 4am local time (4pm yesterday NZT), SKY TG24 reported. Video footage showed rescuers with shovels digging through a wall of snow, and at least one man being led through the cleared path. An ambulance was blocked several kilometres from the hotel, according to SKY.
Other video footage showed rescuers entering the hotel, with piles of snow and rubble cascading down the stairs into the entryway and piled up inside the hotel’s corridors, having slammed through the outer walls of the building.
The mountainous region of central Italy has been struck by a series of quakes since August that destroyed historic centres in dozens of towns and villages. A deadly quake in August killed nearly 300, while no one died in the strong aftershocks in October largely because population centres had been evacuated.
People left homeless by the earlier quakes had been moved to hotels in the region, but it wasn’t clear who was staying at Hotel Rigopiano, in Gran Sasso National Park.
One man has died in a series of strong earthquakes which have hit central Italy, a region devastated by deadly tremors last year.
Four quakes of magnitude 5.2 and higher struck near the hill town of Amatrice, 100km northeast of Rome, in the space of four hours.
Much of the area had already been abandoned after last year’s earthquakes.
The central Lazio, Marche and Abruzzo regions have been grappling with heavy snow, and one man aged about 82 died after the snow and one of the tremors made the roof of a farm building fall on him, a fire service spokesman said. A hotel in Abruzzo was hit by an avalanche and local media reported three people were feared missing.
There were 20 people plus staff at the hotel, regional president Luciano D’Alfonso wrote on Facebook.
Twenty firemen, two mountain rescue teams, six ambulances and local police were heading for the site, a civil protection agency spokesman said.
No other deaths or serious injuries were reported.
Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said soldiers would help rescue teams get to the affected villages.— Reuters