Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Rescuers search for 30 after avalanche hits hotel in Italy
PENNE, Italy — Rescue workers reported no signs of life Thursday at a fourstar hotel buried by an avalanche in the mountains of earthquake-stricken central Italy. Two bodies were recovered of the estimated 30 people trapped inside as the risk of more avalanches slowed the search effort.
Two people escaped the devastation at the Hotel Rigopiano, in the mountains of the Gran Sasso range, and called for help, but it took hours for responders to reach the remote zone on skis.
Days of heavy snowfall had knocked out electricity and phone lines in many central Italian towns and hamlets, and four powerful earthquakes struck the region Wednesday.
It wasn’t clear if any of the quakes triggered the avalanche.
But firefighters said the sheer violence of the 300yard-wide snow slide Wednesday uprooted trees in its wake and wiped out parts of the hotel.
The hotel in the Abruzzo region is about 30 miles from the coastal city of Pescara, at an altitude of about 3,940 feet.
Accounts emerged of hotel guests messaging rescuers and friends for help Wednesday, with at least one attempt at raising the alarm rebuffed for several hours because authorities were said to not believe a disaster had occurred.
When rescuers on skis arrived at the hotel in the early morning hours of Thursday, they found just two people alive: a guest who was running an errand when the avalanche struck and a hotel worker.
Walter Milan, spokesman for the National Alpine rescue corps, said rescue teams tried to reach the site in a snowplow but were blocked by uprooted trees and rocks on the road. Crews donned cross-country skis for the final 11-mile, two-hour stretch to reach the hotel.