Avalanche hits hotel in Italy, 30 missing

PENNE: Rescue workers on skis reached a four-star spa hotel buried by an avalanche in earthquake-stricken central Italy on Thursday, reporting no signs of life as they searched for around 30 people believed trapped inside. Three bodies were recovered as heavy vehicles struggled to get to the scene.

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 arrive to the remote zone.

Days of heavy snowfall had knocked out electricity and phone lines in many central Italian towns and hamlets, compounded by four powerful earthquakes that struck the region on Wednesday.

Firefighters said the sheer violence of the snow slide uprooted trees in its wake and wiped out parts of the hotel, leaving only some structures standing and others down the mountainside.

“There are mattresses that are hundreds of metres away from where the building was,” Luca Cari, firefighters’ spokesman, told the ANSA news agency.

The hotel in the Abruzzo region is about 45 km from the coastal city of Pescara, at an altitude of about 1,200 m. The area, which has been buried under snowfall for days, is located in the broad swath of central Italy between Rieti and Teramo that was jolted by Wednesday’s quakes, one of which had a 5.7 magnitude.

Video shot by teams entering the still-standing parts of the hotel showed huge piles of filthy snow and debris piled up inside the corridors, stairwells and the indoor pool area.