Italy ‘coffin hotel’ buried by slide
Rescuers search for more than 25 thought dead in quake-hit region
AMATRICE, ITALY // More than 25 people are feared dead after an avalanche engulfed a mountain hotel in earthquake- ravaged central Italy.
The prospects of anyone being rescued alive from the Hotel Rigopiano looked bleak with rescue efforts hampered by heavy snow that blocked roads to the remote site.
The three-storey building was hit by a two- metre- high wall of snow late on Wednesday afternoon. The first rescue workers reached the area only in the early hours of yesterday. It was midday by the time a snow plough and the first mechanical excavation equipment reached the scene.
As about 35 firemen and sniffer dogs searched the rubble, officials said one body had been recovered and the location of another one identified by early afternoon.
“The building was basically run over by the avalanche, leaving it buried,” said fire service spokesman Luca Cari.
“I saw mattresses that had been dragged for hundreds of metres, which shows how big the search area is. There are tonnes of snow, tree trunks and all kinds of detritus.”
Italian television showed piles of masonry and rubble in the entrance area of what they dubbed a “coffin hotel”.
The region was hit by four seismic shocks above magnitude 5 on the Richter scale in the space of four hours on Wednesday, killing at least one person.
Quake experts said the tremors almost certainly triggered the snowslide.
Guests at the four- star hotel had been assembled on the ground floor for an evacuation when the avalanche struck. The building was moved about 10 metres off its foundations by the hurtling wall of snow.
Officials confirmed that two guests who were outside the hotel when the avalanche struck had been rescued. They were suffering from hypothermia but were not in any danger.
One of them, identified as Giampiero Parete, 38, said his wife and two children, aged 6 and 8, had been inside the hotel.
Officials said there were 20 guests and seven or eight staff at the hotel on the eastern lower slopes of the Gran Sasso mountain. The first mountain police arrived by helicopter with others following on skis.
They said there were no signs of life inside the building. One of the mountain police commanding officers said there were many dead.
Ambulances were blocked for hours by two metres of snow in the nearest village, Farindola, about nine kilometres away, according to the civil protection agency.
The 45- room hotel was situ- ated at an altitude of 1,200 metres about 90km east of the epicentres of Wednesday’s earthquakes, all near Amatrice, the town devastated in an August quake in which nearly 300 people died. The region, dominated by Gran Sasso, a 2,912m peak, has numerous small ski resorts that are popular with visitors from nearby Rome and urban centres on Italy’s east coast. The one person confirmed dead on Wednesday was a man found under the debris of a building in Castel Castagna, a small town to the north of Farindola.
The quakes affected an area that straddles the regions of Lazio, Marche and Abruzzo, which is home to many remote mountain hamlets. Although many residents had been evacuated from their homes after last year’s earthquakes, there were fears for the families who had decided to stay and were now cut off.
Guido Castelli, the mayor of the Marche town of Ascoli, said his staff were trying to check on about 1,000 people in cut- off hamlets. About 130,000 homes were without electricity after quake damage to pylons and other infrastructure.
Schools in the region were closed until next week to allow for structural safety checks.
Italy is prone to earthquakes but has rarely suffered so many in quick succession.
Since the Amatrice disaster, there have been nine shocks measuring more than magnitude 5 and 47,000 registered aftershocks.
Italy straddles the Eurasian and African tectonic plates, making it vulnerable to seismic activity when they move.
Since the Amatrice disaster, there have been nine shocks measuring more than magnitude 5 and 47,000 registered aftershocks