Puppies give hope to hotel rescuers

Crews searching for 22 people still missing

FARINDOLA, ITALY• Emergency crews pulled three wiggling, white sheepdog puppies out from under tonnes of snow and rubble Monday at an avalanche-struck hotel, lifting spirits even as the search for 22 people still missing dragged on five days after the disaster.

One more body was located, raising the death toll to seven, and the first survivors of the deadly avalanche were released from the hospital. Questions intensified, however, into whether authorities underestimated the risks facing the snowbound resort in the hours before the avalanche.

Five days after up to 60,000 tonnes of snow, rocks and uprooted trees plowed into the Hotel Rigopiano in central Italy, rescue crews were still digging by hand or with shovels and chainsaws in hopes of finding more survivors. An excavator reached the site, northeast of Rome, to speed up the search.

The discovery of the three Abruzzo sheepdog puppies in the boiler room raised spirits, even as rescuers located a seventh body.

Jubilant emergency crews carried the pups out in their arms, with one firefighter burying his face in the fluffy white fur to give the dog a kiss. The puppies were born last month to the hotel’s resi- dent sheepdogs, Nuvola and Lupo, and were prominently featured on the hotel’s Facebook page. Their parents had found their own way out after the Wednesday afternoon avalanche.

“They just started barking very softly,” said Sonia Marini, a member of the Forestry Corps. “In fact, it was hard to find them right away because they were hidden. Then we heard this very tiny bark and we saw them from a little hole the firefighters had opened in the wall. Then we expanded the hole and we pulled them out.”

Firefighter spokesman Luca Cari, however, stressed that the puppies were found in an isolated part of the hotel and didn’t necessarily signal any new hope for finding human survivors.

“We’re happy to have saved them, and these are important moments in a dramatic situation,” he said. “But I don’t think there’s much correlation with finding other people.”

Emergency crews have been hoping that the 22 missing people may have found air pockets under the debris, and that the snow would insulate them from the frigid temperatures. But more than two days have passed since anyone has been pulled out alive from the hotel, and rescue crews were still trying to recover one victim from the rubble.

So far nine people have been rescued from the Hotel Rigopiano. The first survivors released Monday from a hospital in the nearby city of Pescara included Giorgia Galassi and her boyfriend, Vincenzo Forti.