Survivors found in avalanche-hit hotel
PENNE: Rescuers had found six people alive in an Italian mountain hotel devastated by an avalanche two days ago, officials said at press time last night.
Emergency workers were able to speak to the survivors and have called for helicopters to evacuate them after more than 40 hours under the rubble of the Hotel Rigopiano, in central Italy.
Federica Chiavaroli, a junior minister at the justice ministry, confirmed the dramatic development to reporters in the nearby town of Penne, where the rescue effort was being coordinated and some relatives were anxiously awaiting news of missing loved ones.
“Six people have been found alive and they are being pulled out,” the minister said.
More than 25 people, including children, were thought to have been in the hotel when it was hit by a massive wall of snow.
Updated estimates yesterday suggested the total could be as high as 34 — some 20 or 22 guests, seven or eight staff and an unknown number of casual visitors to the four-star, three-storey hotel.
Most of the guests were in or around the hotel’s entrance at the time the avalanche struck in the late afternoon on Wednesday. They had been waiting for transport to take them home following earthquakes in the region earlier in the day.
Two dead bodies had been removed last night from the ruins since the first rescuers reached the hotel in the early hours of Thursday.
Rescue work continued yesterday with search efforts hampered by heavy snow that blocked access roads to the remote site until the early hours of the morning after the avalanche hit.
“Firefighters and alpine rescuers are working tirelessly and now the army is doing everything to improve access to the route,” Deputy Interior Minister Filippo Bubbico told reporters.
Special army mountain rescue teams were seen riding in vehicles with caterpillar tracks.
“A small avalanche has created a wall of snow across the path to the hotel, we are heading up there now to knock it down,” said army Major Nicola Cappozolo. “As long as there is hope of finding survivors we’ll be there”
Italian broadcasters showed images of piles of masonry and rubble in the entrance area of what they dubbed a “coffin hotel”.
The region was hit by four seismic shocks measuring above five magnitude in the space of four hours on Wednesday. Quake experts said the tremors almost certainly triggered the snowslide.
Local officials confirmed two guests who were not inside when the avalanche hit had been rescued.
One of them, identified as Giampiero Parete, 38, was quoted by friends in Italian media as saying his wife and two children, a girl aged six and a boy aged eight, had been inside the hotel.
The hotel, a four-star establishment with its own spa and indoor pool, was located at an altitude of 1,200m around 90km east of the epicentres of Wednesday’s earthquakes. They were also centered near Amatrice, the town devastated in an August quake in which nearly 300 people died.
The quakes affected an area that straddles the regions of Lazio, Marche and Abruzzo, home to many remote mountain hamlets.
Although many residents were evacuated from their homes after last year’s quakes, there were fears for families who decided to stay and are now cut off.
Schools in the affected region have been closed until next week.