FARINDOLA, Italy — Five people were found alive in the rubble of an Italian hotel Friday, two days after an avalanche tore through the mountain resort and trapped an estimated 30 people inside, rescue crews reported.

“We found five people alive. We’re pulling them out. Send us a helicopter,” a rescuer said over firefighters’ radio, overheard by AP photographer Gregorio Borgia who was making his way on foot toward the disaster site.

The radio report, which first came in at around 11 a.m. (1000 GMT), was repeated three more times, with firefighters saying the survivors were still under the rubble and warning the helicopter might have to wait until they were extracted.

Three helicopters landed at the scene, including an air ambulance, said Borgia and AP Producer Paolo Santalucia, who were turned away by the rescue crews about a kilometre (half a mile) from the remains of the Hotel Rigopiano, located about 30 miles (45 kilometres) from the coastal city of Pescara, at an altitude of about 4,000 feet (1,200 metres).

The ANSA news agency said the number of possible new survivors was six.

About 30 people were trapped inside the luxury Hotel Rigopiano when the avalanche hit on Wednesday afternoon, with two people initially surviving the devastation and reporting the emergency.

Search and rescue teams had maintained the hope of finding survivors even though the avalanche dumped up to five metres (17 feet) of snow on the hotel.

“We are hoping that the ceiling collapsed partially in some places and that someone remained underneath,” rescuer Lorenzo Gagliardi told SKY Tg24.

Two bodies were recovered on the first day of searching and RAI state TV reported two more had been located but not yet removed.

The operations have been hampered by difficulty in accessing the remote hotel. Workers have been clearing a seven-kilometre (5.5-mile) road to bring in heavier equipment but it can handle only one-way traffic.

Alpine corps rescuer Milan Walter told SKY that they were considering whether to ferry more personnel in by helicopter as was done Thursday.

A convoy of rescue vehicles made slow progress to the hotel, blocked by snow piled three metres (10 feet) high in some places, fallen trees and rocks. By late Thursday, only 25 vehicles had arrived, along with 135 rescue workers, and civil protection authorities said part of the night was spent trying to widen the road.

The first rescue teams had arrived on skis early Thursday, and firefighters were dropped in by helicopter. Snowmobiles were also being mobilized.

Days of heavy snowfall had knocked out electricity and phone lines in many central Italian towns and hamlets, and the hotel phones went down early Wednesday, just as the first of four powerful earthquakes struck the region.

It wasn’t clear if the quakes triggered the avalanche. But emergency responders said the force of the massive snow slide collapsed a wing of the hotel that faced the mountain and rotated another off its foundation, pushing it downhill.

“The situation is catastrophic,” said Gagliardi of the Alpine rescue service, who was among the first at the scene. “The mountain-facing side is completely destroyed and buried by snow: the kitchen, hotel rooms, hall.”

One of the survivors reported that the guests had all checked out and were waiting for the road to be cleared to be able to leave. The snow plow scheduled for midafternoon never arrived, and the avalanche hit sometime around 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Prosecutors have opened a manslaughter investigation in the tragedy, and among the hypotheses being pursued is whether the avalanche threat wasn’t taken seriously enough, according to Italian media.

Farindola Mayor Ilario Lacchetta said the hotel had 24 guests, four of them children, and 12 employees were onsite at the time of the avalanche.

An Alpine rescue team was the first to arrive on cross-country skis after a seven-kilometre, two-hour journey, finding Giampaolo Parete, a guest who escaped the avalanche when he went to his car to get something, and Fabio Salzetta, a hotel maintenance worker, in a car in the resort’s parking lot.

Parete, whose wife and two children remain among the missing, was taken to a hospital while Salzetta stayed behind with rescuers to help identify where guests might be buried and how crews could enter the buildings, rescuers said.

The mountainous region of central Italy has been struck by a series of quakes since August that destroyed homes and historic centres in dozens of towns and hamlets. A deadly quake in August killed nearly 300. No one died in strong aftershocks in October, largely because population centres had already been evacuated.</s>MILAN — Rescue workers were met with an eerie silence Thursday when they reached a four-star spa hotel struck by an avalanche in a mountainous earthquake-stricken region of central Italy. At least 30 people were missing, including at least two children, authorities said.

Guests at the three-storey Hotel Rigopiano in the central Abruzzo region alerted emergency workers of the disaster on Wednesday, following a series of quakes in the region.

“Help, we’re dying of cold,” one couple wrote rescuers, according to the ANSA news agency. Another man, identified by news reports as Fabio Salzetta, sent a SMS message saying he had escaped with a maintenance worker, but that others were trapped inside.

Corriere della Sera quoted the text message as saying: “Some walls were knocked down.” And: “I’m outside with a maintenance worker but you can’t see anything of the hotel, there’s only a wall of snow in front of me.”

When rescuers on skis arrived in the early morning hours of Thursday, they found just two people alive, according to news reports. Civil protection authorities said that 30 people were missing. The ANSA news agency quoted a rescuer as saying that there were fatalities, but details weren’t immediately available. Just one body was reported removed from the hotel by late morning Thursday.

One of those saved was 38-year-old Giampaolo Parete, who told rescuers he had gone outside to get something from the car, which was untouched by the avalanche, but that his wife and two children were buried inside, the news agency ANSA reported.

Rescue efforts were hampered by the large snowfall in recent days, making it difficult to clear roads for heavy vehicles and ambulances to get through.

The buried hotel was just one of several rescues underway in an area that has been pummelled by more than a metre (three feet) of snow in recent days — storms that have knocked out power and phone lines and blocked roads, isolating towns and hamlets.

Video footage from Italian financial police force GDF showed a grey-haired man being led to safety by rescuers through a path dug out of deep snow from another rescue in the region.

Snow continued to fall throughout the region, with reports of people being isolated in many places. A resident of a town in the province of Teramo, Daiana Nguyen, told SKY TG24 that three metres (about 10 feet) of snow had fallen and that people “were completely isolated.”

The timing of the avalanche Wednesday and the messages remained unclear, but the hotel posted a notice on its Facebook page that its phones were down around 9 a.m. following the first of Wednesday’s quakes, including one with a 5.7 magnitude. It wasn’t immediately clear if the temblors triggered the avalanche.

Video shot by rescue teams showed huge piles of filthy snow and debris piled up inside corridors, stairwells and an indoor pool area, having slammed through the outer walls of the building. The audio is silent. The largest wall of snow shown 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 holes down to try to get in.

The civil protection agency said that they were working to get rescue vehicles to Hotel Rigopiano through roads covered in snow, joining initial rescue efforts overnight by alpine rescue teams who went in on skis.

The hotel is about 45 kilometres (30 miles) from the coastal city of Pescara, at an altitude of about 1,200 metres (3,940 feet).

An ambulance was blocked about nine kilometres (5 1/2 miles) from the hotel, according to SKY, which also said that snowfall was so heavy that snow plows have had trouble clearing the road to the hotel.

The mountainous region of central Italy has been struck by a series of quakes since August that destroyed historic centres in dozens of towns and hamlets. A deadly quake in August killed nearly 300, while no one died in the strong aftershocks in October largely because population centres had already been evacuated. In the meantime, the entire region has been hit by freezing weather and buffeted by snowstorms, piling more suffering on to the hard-hit population.

People left homeless by the earlier quakes had been moved to hotels in the region, but it wasn’t immediately clear if any of them were staying at Hotel Rigopiano, which is located in the Gran Sasso National Park.

On Tuesday, the hotel posted photos of the recent snowfall, calling it “a dream Tuesday. Snow is giving us spectacular scenes.” It advised guests that roads were still passable but snow tires were required with chains for cars. In the hours since the report of the avalanche, Facebook users have been posting messages on the hotel’s page seeking information about the hotel.</s>At least six survivors, including children, have been found inside the rubble of a ski hotel in central Italy that was engulfed by an avalanche on Wednesday.

Several people have been extricated from the remains of Hotel Rigopiano. But around two dozen people remain missing, Christopher Livesay reports for NPR from Rome, while four others have been confirmed dead. The death toll is expected to rise.

Tourists staying at the hotel had checked out and were waiting for roads to be cleared when an avalanche, possibly triggered by earthquakes on Wednesday, swept over and into the hotel. Two men, outside the building when the avalanche began, were located alive — but until Friday morning, there had been no sign of life inside the snow-covered resort.

Rescuers were overheard by The Associated Press saying over the radio that they had found people alive.

The number of survivors located Friday might be as high as eight, according to some Italian news outlets. After talking with the trapped people, firefighters and other rescuers worked to free them from the snow and debris.

The ANSA news agency says rescue operations proceeded in two stages, with six people being extracted — including two children — and then two more people.

The AP reports that the "incredible" discovery boosted the spirits of rescue crews:



From very early on, rescue crews knew that at least some people had survived the initial disaster — a few people buried alive sent text messages, according to reports in Italian media on Thursday. "Italian daily La Repubblica reports that one of those texts read, 'Help, help, we're freezing to death,' " Livesay says.

But rescue operations have been challenging. Those inside the hotel were trapped by 17 feet of snow as well as by the rubble, the AP reports. Walls were collapsed by the force of the avalanche, and entire one wing of the hotel was pushed downhill.

Transport has also been hampered by the narrow, snow-covered roads in the region. The first rescue teams arrived on skis; the next wave, by helicopter. Attempts to reach the region by vehicle have been slow, according to the AP, with snow piled 10 feet high and a 5.5-mile stretch of road able to take only one-way traffic.

"By late Thursday, only 25 vehicles had arrived, along with 135 rescue workers, and civil protection authorities said part of the night was spent trying to widen the road," the AP writes.

Rescuers are also fighting against the clock, Livesay reported earlier. "Chances of survival are waning amid nightfall and plunging temperatures," he says.

Meanwhile, even as rescue operations are ongoing, Italian media and officials are already considering the question of responsibility.

"State prosecutors have launched an investigation to find out if the disaster could have been averted," Livesay reports. "An avalanche warning had already been in effect, so the question is: Why wasn't the hotel evacuated before the avalanche, when it's at the base of a snowy mountain in an area that's prone to earthquakes?"</s>A rescue team fought its way through snow and fallen trees to the small hotel in central Italy which had been struck by an avalanche.</s>An Italian firefighter helicopter flies during rescue operations in the area where an hotel was hit by an avalanche in Farindola, Italy, early Thursday, Jan. 19, 2017.

PENNE, Italy — 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 yards away from where the building was," Luca Cari, firefighters' spokesman, 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 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.

"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, starting at 8 p.m., more than two hours later.

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

Parete 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; they were believed to be Parete's family.

Video shot by 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, having slammed through the outer walls of the building. The audio is silent except for the steps of the cameraman. The largest wall of snow shown 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 holes down to try to get in.

Civil protection authorities said that around 30 people were missing. By Thursday afternoon, three bodies had been removed. Civil protection officials said the risk of further avalanches was factoring into the search effort.

Premier Paolo Gentiloni, arriving at the civil protection headquarters in the area at midday Thursday, sought to deflect criticism of the rescue efforts and urged authorities to redouble efforts to reach people isolated by the quakes and snow, which had dumped as much as 10 feet in some places.

Residents have been complaining for days that they have been without electricity and phone service and have been house-bound because of what Gentiloni called a "record snowfall."

"I ask everyone if possible to multiply their efforts," Gentiloni said. "I ask politicians to show sobriety respecting the difficulty of the situation and the commitment of civil and military crews who are responding."

The buried hotel was just one of several rescues underway: Video footage from the Italian financial police force showed a gray-haired man being led to safety by rescuers through a path dug out of deep snow elsewhere else in the region.

Snow continued to fall Thursday with reports of people being isolated in many places. Daiana Nguyen, a resident of a town in the province of Teramo, told SKY TG24 that about 10 feet of snow had fallen and that people were "completely isolated."

"They talk about sending in the army: Thirty to 40 men came with shovels. We need heavy machinery!" she said.

The timing of the avalanche Wednesday remained unclear, but the hotel posted a notice on its Facebook page that its phones were down around 9 a.m. following the first of Wednesday's quakes.

Marcella, a restaurant owner on the nearby coast, said he received the call from Parete, his chef, at around 5:30 p.m. He reported that all of the guests had checked out and were waiting for the roads to be cleared on Wednesday afternoon when the avalanche struck. Initially the road was to be cleared by 3 p.m., but that was delayed until 7 p.m.

The mountainous region of central Italy has been struck by a series of quakes since August that destroyed homes and historic centers in dozens of towns and hamlets. A deadly quake in August killed nearly 300, while no one died in the strong aftershocks in October largely because population centers had already been evacuated.

On Tuesday, the hotel posted photos of the recent snowfall, calling it "a dream Tuesday. Snow is giving us spectacular scenes."</s>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 meters (yards) away from where the building was," Luca Cari, firefighters' spokesman, 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 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.

"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, starting at 8 p.m., more than two hours later.

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

Parete 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; they were believed to be Parete's family.

Video shot by 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, having slammed through the outer walls of the building. The audio is silent except for the steps of the cameraman. The largest wall of snow shown 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 holes down to try to get in.

Civil protection authorities said that around 30 people were missing. By Thursday afternoon, three bodies had been removed. Civil protection officials said the risk of further avalanches was factoring into the search effort.

Premier Paolo Gentiloni, arriving at the civil protection headquarters in the area at midday Thursday, sought to deflect criticism of the rescue efforts and urged authorities to redouble efforts to reach people isolated by the quakes and snow, which had dumped as much as 3 meters (10 feet) in some places.

Residents have been complaining for days that they have been without electricity and phone service and have been house-bound because of what Gentiloni called a "record snowfall."

"I ask everyone if possible to multiply their efforts," Gentiloni said. "I ask politicians to show sobriety respecting the difficulty of the situation and the commitment of civil and military crews who are responding."

The buried hotel was just one of several rescues underway: Video footage from the Italian financial police force showed a gray-haired man being led to safety by rescuers through a path dug out of deep snow elsewhere else in the region.

Snow continued to fall Thursday with reports of people being isolated in many places. Daiana Nguyen, a resident of a town in the province of Teramo, told SKY TG24 that 3 meters (about 10 feet) of snow had fallen and that people were "completely isolated."

"They talk about sending in the army: Thirty to 40 men came with shovels. We need heavy machinery!" she said.

The timing of the avalanche Wednesday remained unclear, but the hotel posted a notice on its Facebook page that its phones were down around 9 a.m. following the first of Wednesday's quakes.

Marcella, a restaurant owner on the nearby coast, said he received the call from Parete, his chef, at around 5:30 p.m. He reported that all of the guests had checked out and were waiting for the roads to be cleared on Wednesday afternoon when the avalanche struck. Initially the road was to be cleared by 3 p.m., but that was delayed until 7 p.m.

The mountainous region of central Italy has been struck by a series of quakes since August that destroyed homes and historic centers in dozens of towns and hamlets. A deadly quake in August killed nearly 300, while no one died in the strong aftershocks in October largely because population centers had already been evacuated.

On Tuesday, the hotel posted photos of the recent snowfall, calling it "a dream Tuesday. Snow is giving us spectacular scenes."</s>At least six survivors, including children, have been found inside the rubble of a ski hotel in central Italy that was engulfed by an avalanche on Wednesday.

Several people have been extricated from the remains of Hotel Rigopiano. But around two dozen people remain missing, Christopher Livesay reports for NPR from Rome, while four others have been confirmed dead. The death toll is expected to rise.

Tourists staying at the hotel had checked out and were waiting for roads to be cleared when an avalanche, possibly triggered by earthquakes on Wednesday, swept over and into the hotel. Two men, outside the building when the avalanche began, were located alive — but until Friday morning, there had been no sign of life inside the snow-covered resort.

Rescuers were overheard by The Associated Press saying over the radio that they had found people alive.

The number of survivors located Friday might be as high as eight, according to some Italian news outlets. After talking with the trapped people, firefighters and other rescuers worked to free them from the snow and debris.

The ANSA news agency says rescue operations proceeded in two stages, with six people being extracted — including two children — and then two more people.

The AP reports that the "incredible" discovery boosted the spirits of rescue crews:



From very early on, rescue crews knew that at least some people had survived the initial disaster — a few people buried alive sent text messages, according to reports in Italian media on Thursday. "Italian daily La Repubblica reports that one of those texts read, 'Help, help, we're freezing to death,' " Livesay says.

But rescue operations have been challenging. Those inside the hotel were trapped by 17 feet of snow as well as by the rubble, the AP reports. Walls were collapsed by the force of the avalanche, and entire one wing of the hotel was pushed downhill.

Transport has also been hampered by the narrow, snow-covered roads in the region. The first rescue teams arrived on skis; the next wave, by helicopter. Attempts to reach the region by vehicle have been slow, according to the AP, with snow piled 10 feet high and a 5.5-mile stretch of road able to take only one-way traffic.

"By late Thursday, only 25 vehicles had arrived, along with 135 rescue workers, and civil protection authorities said part of the night was spent trying to widen the road," the AP writes.

Rescuers are also fighting against the clock, Livesay reported earlier. "Chances of survival are waning amid nightfall and plunging temperatures," he says.

Meanwhile, even as rescue operations are ongoing, Italian media and officials are already considering the question of responsibility.

"State prosecutors have launched an investigation to find out if the disaster could have been averted," Livesay reports. "An avalanche warning had already been in effect, so the question is: Why wasn't the hotel evacuated before the avalanche, when it's at the base of a snowy mountain in an area that's prone to earthquakes?"</s>FARINDOLA, Italy — Five people were found alive in the rubble of an Italian hotel Friday, two days after an avalanche tore through the mountain resort and trapped an estimated 30 people inside, rescue crews reported.

“We found five people alive. We’re pulling them out. Send us a helicopter,” a rescuer said over firefighters’ radio, overheard by AP photographer Gregorio Borgia who was making his way on foot toward the disaster site.

The radio report, which first came in at around 11 a.m. (1000 GMT), was repeated three more times, with firefighters saying the survivors were still under the rubble and warning the helicopter might have to wait until they were extracted.

Three helicopters landed at the scene, including an air ambulance, said Borgia and AP Producer Paolo Santalucia, who were turned away by the rescue crews about a kilometre (half a mile) from the remains of the Hotel Rigopiano, located about 30 miles (45 kilometres) from the coastal city of Pescara, at an altitude of about 4,000 feet (1,200 metres).

The ANSA news agency said the number of possible new survivors was six.

About 30 people were trapped inside the luxury Hotel Rigopiano when the avalanche hit on Wednesday afternoon, with two people initially surviving the devastation and reporting the emergency.

Search and rescue teams had maintained the hope of finding survivors even though the avalanche dumped up to five metres (17 feet) of snow on the hotel.

“We are hoping that the ceiling collapsed partially in some places and that someone remained underneath,” rescuer Lorenzo Gagliardi told SKY Tg24.

Two bodies were recovered on the first day of searching and RAI state TV reported two more had been located but not yet removed.

The operations have been hampered by difficulty in accessing the remote hotel. Workers have been clearing a seven-kilometre (5.5-mile) road to bring in heavier equipment but it can handle only one-way traffic.

Alpine corps rescuer Milan Walter told SKY that they were considering whether to ferry more personnel in by helicopter as was done Thursday.

A convoy of rescue vehicles made slow progress to the hotel, blocked by snow piled three metres (10 feet) high in some places, fallen trees and rocks. By late Thursday, only 25 vehicles had arrived, along with 135 rescue workers, and civil protection authorities said part of the night was spent trying to widen the road.

The first rescue teams had arrived on skis early Thursday, and firefighters were dropped in by helicopter. Snowmobiles were also being mobilized.

Days of heavy snowfall had knocked out electricity and phone lines in many central Italian towns and hamlets, and the hotel phones went down early Wednesday, just as the first of four powerful earthquakes struck the region.

It wasn’t clear if the quakes triggered the avalanche. But emergency responders said the force of the massive snow slide collapsed a wing of the hotel that faced the mountain and rotated another off its foundation, pushing it downhill.

“The situation is catastrophic,” said Gagliardi of the Alpine rescue service, who was among the first at the scene. “The mountain-facing side is completely destroyed and buried by snow: the kitchen, hotel rooms, hall.”

One of the survivors reported that the guests had all checked out and were waiting for the road to be cleared to be able to leave. The snow plow scheduled for midafternoon never arrived, and the avalanche hit sometime around 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Prosecutors have opened a manslaughter investigation in the tragedy, and among the hypotheses being pursued is whether the avalanche threat wasn’t taken seriously enough, according to Italian media.

Farindola Mayor Ilario Lacchetta said the hotel had 24 guests, four of them children, and 12 employees were onsite at the time of the avalanche.

An Alpine rescue team was the first to arrive on cross-country skis after a seven-kilometre, two-hour journey, finding Giampaolo Parete, a guest who escaped the avalanche when he went to his car to get something, and Fabio Salzetta, a hotel maintenance worker, in a car in the resort’s parking lot.

Parete, whose wife and two children remain among the missing, was taken to a hospital while Salzetta stayed behind with rescuers to help identify where guests might be buried and how crews could enter the buildings, rescuers said.

The mountainous region of central Italy has been struck by a series of quakes since August that destroyed homes and historic centres in dozens of towns and hamlets. A deadly quake in August killed nearly 300. No one died in strong aftershocks in October, largely because population centres had already been evacuated.</s>FARINDOLA, Italy (AP) — With cheers of joy, rescue crews pulled survivors from the debris of an avalanche-crushed hotel in central Italy on Friday, boosting spirits two days after the massive snow slide buried some 30 people at the resort. At least two children were among the 10 people found alive.

The news sent relatives of the missing rushing from the rescue operations center in the mountains to the hospital on the coast in hopes that their loved ones were among the lucky few to be found.

And it buoyed rescue workers who had already located four bodies from the avalanche that slammed Wednesday into the luxury Hotel Rigopiano, 180 kilometers (112 miles) northeast of Rome, and dumped up to 5 meters (16½ feet) of snow on top of the resort.

“Today is a day of hope. There’s a miracle under way,” said Ilario Lacchetta, mayor of the tiny town of Farindola, where the hotel is located.

First word of the discovery came at around 11 a.m. Video released by rescuers showed a boy wearing blue snow pants and a matching ski shirt emerging through a snow hole. Emergency crews mussed his hair in celebration.

Next came a woman with a long ponytail wearing red snow pants, appearing fully alert. Both were helped to a stretcher for the helicopter ride out.

“This first news has obviously repaid all the rescuers’ efforts,” said Italy’s deputy interior minister, Filippo Bubbico.

About 30 people were trapped inside the hotel in the Gran Sasso mountain range when the avalanche struck after days of winter storms that dumped up to 3 meters (nearly 10 feet) of snow in some places. The region was also rocked by four earthquakes on Wednesday, though it was not clear if any of those set off the avalanche.

Two people initially survived the devastation and called for help. One of them, Giampiero Parete, had called his boss and begged him to mobilize rescue crews because his wife and two children were trapped inside.

Parete’s Romanian-born wife, Adriana Vranceanu, 43, and 8-year-old son Gianfilippo, were reunited later Friday with their father at the hospital in the nearby city of Pescara, ANSA news agency and state-run RAI radio said.

Rescue workers were still searching for their daughter, 6-year-old Ludovica, after her mother indicated she was alive under the debris. The Romanian foreign ministry confirmed an adult and child had been rescued and taken to the hospital in Pescara.

Outside the hospital, other relatives gathered anxiously as ambulances arrived.

“I just hope that my niece and her boyfriend will make it out of there,” said Melissa Riccardo. “We just came here to see if she was here.”

The number of survivors found and extracted evolved over the course of the day.

“We found five people alive. We’re pulling them out. Send us a helicopter!” a rescuer was heard saying over a firefighters’ radio as Associated Press reporters made their way on foot to the site of the disaster.

Late Friday, firefighter spokesman Luca Cari said a total of 10 survivors, including two children, had been located but only a few had been extracted.

Rescue crews said one group of survivors had been found in the hotel’s kitchen area, and had survived thanks to an air pocket that formed when reinforced cement walls partially resisted the avalanche’s violent power.

“It’s probable that they realized the risk and took protective measures,” Romano said.

Those being rescued were in remarkably good condition, rescue workers said.

Titi Postiglione, operations chief of the civil protection agency, said survivors would help rescuers try to locate others trapped in the hotel.

“They can give us a series of indications to help with our intervention plan, information to understand what happened and help direct the search,” she said.

Prosecutors opened a manslaughter investigation into the tragedy and were looking into whether the avalanche threat was taken seriously enough, and whether the hotel should have been evacuated earlier given the heavy snowfall and forecasts, Italian media said.

“That hotel, in that historic moment, should it have been open?” prosecutor Christina Tedeschini was quoted by ANSA as saying. “If the people wanted to leave, what prevented them from doing so?”

Parete, the survivor who sounded the alarm, said the guests had all checked out and were waiting for the road to be cleared so they could evacuate. But the snowplow never arrived and the avalanche hit around 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.

In addition, pleas for a rescue team initially went unheeded by Italian authorities. Parete’s boss, restaurant owner Quintino Marcella, said his call to the Pescara prefect’s office was rebuffed because the hotel had informed it a few hours earlier that all was OK there.

He persisted with other emergency responders and eventually someone took his information seriously and mobilized the rescue, some two hours later.

Tedeschini said the delay was “a relevant theme that we will look into.”

The operation has also been hampered by fears of triggering new avalanches and building collapses onto possible survivors trapped in the hotel rubble.

Workers have been clearing a 7-kilometer (5.5-mile) road to bring in heavier equipment, but the mountain road can handle only one-way traffic and is covered with snow and fallen trees and rocks.

Days of heavy snowfall had knocked out electricity and phone lines in many central Italian towns and hamlets, and the hotel phones went down early Wednesday, just as the first of the four powerful earthquakes struck.

The force of the massive snow slide collapsed one wing of the hotel and rotated another off its foundation, pushing it downhill.

Lacchetta, the Farindola mayor, said the hotel had 24 guests, four of them children, and 12 employees onsite at the time of the avalanche.

An Alpine rescue team was the first to arrive at the hotel on cross-country skis after a seven-kilometer (more than four-mile) journey that took two hours. They found Parete and Fabio Salzetta, a hotel maintenance worker, in a car in the resort’s parking lot.

Parete was taken to a hospital while Salzetta stayed behind to help rescuers identify where guests might be buried and how crews could enter the buildings.

The mountainous region of central Italy has been struck by a series of quakes since August that destroyed homes and historic centers in dozens of towns and hamlets. A deadly quake in August killed nearly 300 people. No one died in strong aftershocks in the region in October, largely because towns had already been evacuated.</s>MILAN — Rescue workers were met with an eerie silence Thursday when they reached a four-star spa hotel struck by an avalanche in a mountainous earthquake-stricken region of central Italy. At least 30 people were missing, including at least two children, authorities said.

Guests at the three-storey Hotel Rigopiano in the central Abruzzo region alerted emergency workers of the disaster on Wednesday, following a series of quakes in the region.

“Help, we’re dying of cold,” one couple wrote rescuers, according to the ANSA news agency. Another man, identified by news reports as Fabio Salzetta, sent a SMS message saying he had escaped with a maintenance worker, but that others were trapped inside.

Corriere della Sera quoted the text message as saying: “Some walls were knocked down.” And: “I’m outside with a maintenance worker but you can’t see anything of the hotel, there’s only a wall of snow in front of me.”

When rescuers on skis arrived in the early morning hours of Thursday, they found just two people alive, according to news reports. Civil protection authorities said that 30 people were missing. The ANSA news agency quoted a rescuer as saying that there were fatalities, but details weren’t immediately available. Just one body was reported removed from the hotel by late morning Thursday.

One of those saved was 38-year-old Giampaolo Parete, who told rescuers he had gone outside to get something from the car, which was untouched by the avalanche, but that his wife and two children were buried inside, the news agency ANSA reported.

Rescue efforts were hampered by the large snowfall in recent days, making it difficult to clear roads for heavy vehicles and ambulances to get through.

The buried hotel was just one of several rescues underway in an area that has been pummelled by more than a metre (three feet) of snow in recent days — storms that have knocked out power and phone lines and blocked roads, isolating towns and hamlets.

Video footage from Italian financial police force GDF showed a grey-haired man being led to safety by rescuers through a path dug out of deep snow from another rescue in the region.

Snow continued to fall throughout the region, with reports of people being isolated in many places. A resident of a town in the province of Teramo, Daiana Nguyen, told SKY TG24 that three metres (about 10 feet) of snow had fallen and that people “were completely isolated.”

The timing of the avalanche Wednesday and the messages remained unclear, but the hotel posted a notice on its Facebook page that its phones were down around 9 a.m. following the first of Wednesday’s quakes, including one with a 5.7 magnitude. It wasn’t immediately clear if the temblors triggered the avalanche.

Video shot by rescue teams showed huge piles of filthy snow and debris piled up inside corridors, stairwells and an indoor pool area, having slammed through the outer walls of the building. The audio is silent. The largest wall of snow shown 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 holes down to try to get in.

The civil protection agency said that they were working to get rescue vehicles to Hotel Rigopiano through roads covered in snow, joining initial rescue efforts overnight by alpine rescue teams who went in on skis.

The hotel is about 45 kilometres (30 miles) from the coastal city of Pescara, at an altitude of about 1,200 metres (3,940 feet).

An ambulance was blocked about nine kilometres (5 1/2 miles) from the hotel, according to SKY, which also said that snowfall was so heavy that snow plows have had trouble clearing the road to the hotel.

The mountainous region of central Italy has been struck by a series of quakes since August that destroyed historic centres in dozens of towns and hamlets. A deadly quake in August killed nearly 300, while no one died in the strong aftershocks in October largely because population centres had already been evacuated. In the meantime, the entire region has been hit by freezing weather and buffeted by snowstorms, piling more suffering on to the hard-hit population.

People left homeless by the earlier quakes had been moved to hotels in the region, but it wasn’t immediately clear if any of them were staying at Hotel Rigopiano, which is located in the Gran Sasso National Park.

On Tuesday, the hotel posted photos of the recent snowfall, calling it “a dream Tuesday. Snow is giving us spectacular scenes.” It advised guests that roads were still passable but snow tires were required with chains for cars. In the hours since the report of the avalanche, Facebook users have been posting messages on the hotel’s page seeking information about the hotel.
Italian emergency crews rescue 10 people, including four children, from 16½ feet of snow and wreckage from the luxury Hotel Rigopiano following yesterday's Gran Sasso mountain avalanche. Searchers find four bodies, while families of at least 16 people still missing wait for news.