The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Survivors of avalanche tell AP they never gave up hope
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 glassand 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 the threat of an avalanche at the snow-bound 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 that they would survive.
They had arrived at the luxury hotel the evening before the deadly avalanche, undeterred by the accumulating heavy snow.
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 5 ½-mile road through Gran Sasso park so they could go home.
Galassi said she was particularly fearful of the temblors that had started that morning, and had waited outside for a while. But she went back into the hotel due to the cold and after the hotel management’s assurances that it had resisted previous quakes.
It wasn’t long before a loud roar announced the tragedy.
“It all started from a rumble,” Forti told a news conference at a hotel later Wednesday. “And then everything collapsed. A roar, what can I say, a roar.”
After the shock of finding themselves beneath a wicker chair that protected them from a beam, Galassi and Forti said the first relief was realizing 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 20 inches between their heads and the ceiling. The whole space was less than that of a single bed, according to Forti. But behind them, they could see ice through a hole in the glass panel that they could reach if they stretched out. That ice was their lifeline, something to suck on and quench their thirst.
“At times there was even glass and mud (in the ice). But it was survival,” Galassi said.
For a while, their cellphones gave them some light. The then 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 have also told journalists that the survivors were insulated by the yards of snow on top of them, which created an igloo effect.
During the interminable wait for help, they spoke with Francesca Bronzi, another survivor on the other side of the beam. Bronzi had a watch and helped them keep track of time. They could also hear a mother with her son nearby, who turned out to be Adriana Vranceanu and her 8-year-old son Gianfilippo, both of whom also survived.