Brava! They’re alive
13 found in hotel ruins
Rescuers have found signs that 13 people are still alive yesterday, two days after being buried under a massive avalanche that hit a luxury mountain hotel in central Italy.
It was revealed a woman and boy pulled from the snow are the family of a chef who narrowly avoided the tragedy.
Civil Protection official Titti Postiglione said two of the survivors had already been pulled clear of the snow and debris which destroyed the isolated Hotel Rigopiano on Wednesday. Rescuers were digging to free the remaining people.
“Finding these people gives us further hope there are other survivors,” Postiglione said.
Rescue teams located the group of ten people who had been hiding in a kitchen of the barricaded hotel for about 40 hours, where they made a fire and ate food they found in cupboards.
And incredible footage has emerged showing the mother and son being rescued.
Emerging from the structure rescue crews patted the eight-year-old boy called Gianfilippo on the head in celebration before a woman, thought to be Adriana Vranceanu, emerged to chants of “Brava Brava!” before she shouted, “Find my daughter!”
The survivors appeared alert and walking on their own.
Marco Bini, an officer with the mountain rescue wing of the GDF financial police, said: “We saw smoke, there were a few small fires in the rubble, and where there is fire there is air so we started to dig.
“The fire will have been using up the oxygen so we were lucky to find them. Their faces said it all, it was like they had been reborn.”
In addition the hotel’s dogs Wolf and Cloud, were also pulled alive from the building and are being cared for by a hotel worker who had escaped.
More than 30 people, including four children, were in the building when the avalanche slammed into it, reducing much of it to rubble and spreading debris across the valley floor. Helicopters have been dispatched with equipment and doctors to help evacuate the survivors.
Officials have confirmed that two bodies have been removed from the site.
The disaster struck the hotel late on Wednesday afternoon amid a driving snowstorm, just hours after four earthquakes with a magnitude above 5 rattled the area.
An investigation has been opened by a court in Pescara amid accusations the emergency response was slow. The first rescuers arrived amid a snow storm on skis early on Thursday morning, 11 hours after the avalanche.
Earlier it was reported that desperate guests trapped inside the hotel sent SMSes to loved ones after the building was crushed. One message, believed to have been sent from the hotel, said “Help, help, we are dying of the cold” while another, sent from outside, urged them to remain “calm”. Trapped guests are reported to have sent SMSes directly to emergency services. – Reuters