PENNE, Italy — 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.
PENNE, Italy — 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. But 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 nine 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 that 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.