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Hotel buried in quake

UPDATED: 8:20 a.m.

Rescue workers on skis reached a four-star spa hotel buried by an avalanche in earthquake-stricken central Italy 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.

It wasn't immediately clear which if any of the quakes triggered the avalanche. But 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 kilometres from the coastal city of Pescara, at an altitude of about 1,200 metres. 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.

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 for him to mobilize rescue crews. His wife Adriana and two children, Ludovica and Gianfilippo, were trapped inside, 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.



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