Rescuers search for 30 after avalanche hits Italian hotel

This photo taken from a video shows piles of snow and rubble Thursday cascading down the stairway into the foyer of the Hotel Rigopiano in Farindola, Italy. Italian media say the avalanche covered the three-story hotel in the central region of Abruzzo on Wednesday evening.
This photo taken from a video shows piles of snow and rubble Thursday cascading down the stairway into the foyer of the Hotel Rigopiano in Farindola, Italy. Italian media say the avalanche covered the three-story hotel in the central region of Abruzzo on Wednesday evening.

PENNE, Italy (AP) - Rescue workers reported no signs of life Thursday at a four-star hotel buried by an avalanche in the mountains of earthquake-stricken central Italy. Two bodies were recovered of the estimated 30 people trapped inside as the risk of more avalanches slowed the search effort.

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 reach the remote zone on skis.

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

It wasn't immediately clear if any of the quakes triggered the avalanche. However, firefighters said the sheer violence of the 300-yard-wide snow slide on Wednesday uprooted trees in its wake and wiped out parts of the hotel.

"There are mattresses that are hundreds of meters away from where the building was," firefighters' spokesman Luca Cari told the ANSA news agency.

The hotel in the Abruzzo region is about 30 miles from the coastal city of Pescara, at an altitude of about 3,940 feet. The area, which has been buried under as much as 9 feet of 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.

Accounts emerged of hotel guests messaging rescuers and friends for help Wednesday, with at least one attempt at raising the alarm rebuffed for several hours.

Giampiero Parete, a chef vacationing at the hotel, called his boss when the avalanche struck and begged him to mobilize rescue crews. His wife Adriana and two children, Ludovica and Gianfilippo, were trapped inside, the employer, Quintino Marcella, told the Associated Press.

Parete had left the hotel briefly to get some medicine for his wife from their car, and survived as a result.

"He said the hotel was submerged and to call rescue crews," Marcella said, adding he phoned police and the Pescara prefect's office, but that no one believed him. "The prefect's office said it wasn't true, because everything was OK at the hotel."

Marcella said he insisted, and called other emergency numbers until someone finally took him seriously and mobilized a rescue at 8 p.m., more than two hours later.

When rescuers on skis arrived at the hotel in the early morning hours of Thursday, they found just two people alive: Parete and Fabio Salzetta, identified by Italian media as a hotel maintenance worker. There were no other signs of life, with rescue crews saying their shouts received no replies.

Walter Milan, spokesman for the National Alpine rescue corps, said rescue teams tried to reach the site in a snowplow but were blocked by uprooted trees and rocks on the road. Crews donned cross-country skis for the final 41/2-mile, two-hour stretch to reach the hotel.

"The access is not easy, the bad weather didn't help. There is a lot of snow but I have to say that our work is going on quickly considering the size of the avalanche," he told reporters in Penne, the staging area for the rescue.

He said the search effort consisted first of doing a sight and sound survey of the area, and then breaking up the disaster zone into smaller pockets and moving to investigate each quadrant.

Heavy equipment - snowplows and other earthmoving equipment - were struggling to reach the area and only 25 vehicles had arrived, along with 135 rescue workers, said Civil Protection operations chief Titi Postiglione. She said the risk of further avalanches was slowing the delicate work.

"It's an enormously complex situation, and we are very concerned," she said.

Parete, the chef, was being treated for hypothermia at a hospital in Pescara. The Romanian foreign ministry reported three Romanian citizens missing in the hotel - an adult and two children, who were believed to be Parete's family.

Video shot by rescue 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. There was no sound except for the steps of the cameraman. The largest wall of snow was in the pool area, where plastic lounge chairs were flipped on their sides and Christmas decorations still dangled from the ceiling.

The bar area appeared flooded, with nearby cracked skylights covered with snow outside.

Aerial video shot by helicopter crews showed rescue workers on top of the snow-covered hotel, digging to try to get in. Later in the day, a helicopter brought in boxes of food for rescue teams.

Civil protection authorities said that about 30 people were missing. By Thursday afternoon, two bodies had been removed.