Snowbound pair never gave up
Couple said they first heard rescuers nearly two days after Italy avalanche struck hotel
GIULIANOVA, ITALY— First there was a loud roar. Then darkness — hours and hours of darkness.
A couple among the nine survivors of an Italian avalanche that devastated a mountain hotel say they survived nearly 58 hours buried beneath feet of snow by sucking on glass- and mud-filled ice, comforting each other and those nearby, and praying.
The initial shock was so loud and the force so strong that the couple, 22-year-old Giorgia Galassi and her boyfriend, 25-year-old Vincenzo Forti, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that they were convinced it was another earthquake rocking the luxury Hotel Rigopiano.
They never considered an avalanche at the snowbound resort.
“I don’t think anyone imagined it. We didn’t know until the firefighters told us. We thought the whole time it was a very strong earthquake,” Galassi said in her parents’ living room in the town of Giulianova, sitting next to Forti.
She wore a necklace of an angel that a friend had just given her, celebrating their survival. Galassi and Forti were two of the nine people pulled out alive after the Jan. 18 avalanche. At least 25 others died and four still remain missing in the mountainous region northeast of Rome.
They said they were scared but never gave up hope they would survive.
They had arrived at the luxury hotel the evening before the deadly avalanche. When it hit the next afternoon, they were gathered with the other guests ready to leave, sitting in a tea room or standing in the adjacent entry hall, waiting for a snowplow to clear the nine-kilometre road through Gran Sasso park so they could go home.
It wasn’t long before a loud roar announced the tragedy.
After the shock of finding themselves beneath a wicker chair that protected them from a beam, Galassi and Forti said the first relief was real- izing they were not alone.
“When we fell, when everything fell on top of us, we yelled, ‘Is anyone alive? We are alive!’ ” Galassi said. “Then we heard another voice, and we were relieved.”
When they looked up, they had just 50 centimetres between their heads and the ceiling. The whole space was less than that of a single bed, according to Forti.
For a while, their cellphones gave them some light. Then the dark came. The young couple huddled together in the tiny space, sitting at first and then lying down to sleep, using Galassi’s fur coat and a blanket they found nearby for warmth.
Forti said heat from the fireplace near where they had been sitting kept the temperatures comfortable for many hours. Rescuers also told journalists that the survivors were insulated by the metres of snow on top of them, which created an igloo effect.
Galassi said they first heard rescuers around 11 a.m. Friday when they heard someone speaking with a voice they hadn’t heard before.
Within a short time, they were free.