Avalanche buries hotel, killing dozens
Only two survivors located after quakes and heavy snow destroy remote retreat
AHUGE avalanche swallowed up a luxury mountain hotel in central Italy after a series of strong earthquakes rocked the area, burying up to 30 people under tons of snow and debris.
Italian media said three bodies had been retrieved from the site.
Rescue workers declined to comment on the reports, but said they had yet to find any sign of life.
The gabled peaks of parts of the roof and a row of windows were the only sections of the four-storey Hotel Rigopiano still visible after the wall of snow smashed into the fourstar spa resort on Wednesday evening.
Authorities said about 30 people had been in the building at the time, including two children, but more than 20 hours later, only a couple of survivors had been found – two men who had been outside when the disaster struck.
“The hotel is almost completely destroyed. We’ve called out but we’ve heard no replies, no voices,” Antonio Crocetta, a member of the Alpine Rescue squad, said.
“We’re digging, looking for people,” he said from the isolated location in the Gran Sasso mountain range in the central Abruzzo region. Sniffer dogs have been brought in to help locate possible survivors.
Rescue workers entered what appeared to be a lobby decorated with oil paintings and plants, where a landslide had torn through a wall, television footage showed.
Mattresses and furniture were spotted dozens of metres away.
“I am alive because I went to get something from my car,” one of the two survivors, Giampiero Parete, told medical staff.
He had been on holiday with his wife and two children, who were all still missing.
Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni called for national unity, saying Italy was caught in an “unprecedented vice” of earthquakes and heavy snow simultaneously.
The rescue operation was hampered by metres of snow which has fallen on the Gran Sasso in recent days.
Drifts made snow as deep as 5m in some places and snow ploughs struggled to cut a path up winding mountain roads.
The first rescuers only managed to arrive at 4.30am yesterday, after having to ski through a blizzard to reach the site.
The avalanche shunted the 43-room hotel about 10m down the hill, according to media reports.