Rescue workers are racing against time to dig out a four-star spa hotel buried by an avalanche in earthquake-stricken central Italy Thursday — and some are accussing authorities of ignoring initial calls for help.
While authorities fear there is as many as 30 people dead inside, reports have emerged on desperate messages being received from trapped victims begging for help immediately after the avalanche.
And their cries for help were ignored, critics say.
“One message, believed to have been sent from the four-star Hotel Rigopiano, said ‘Help, help, we are dying of the cold’ while another, sent from outside, urged those still caught inside to ‘be calm’,” The Daily Mail is reporting.
(Italian Finance Police via AP)
As heavy vehicles tried to reach the Hotel Rigopiano to help with the rescue, criticism mounted over the response to the four quakes after days of unusually heavy snowfall that have blanketed the region.
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.
Parete had left briefly to get some medicine for his wife, and survived as a result.
“He said the hotel was submerged and to call rescue crews,” Marcella said. He said 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 O.K. 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 in the early morning hours of Thursday, they found just two people alive: Parete and another guest, Fabio Salzetta.
This photo taken from a video shows show piles of snow and rubble cascading down the stairway into the foyer. (Italian Finance Police via AP)
Salzetta had also sent a message out: “Some walls were knocked down,” Corriere della Sera reported, 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.”
Civil protection authorities said that 30 people were missing, and are feared dead. ANSA 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.
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 in some places has dumped as much as six feet.
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.”
Rescue efforts were hampered by the snow, making it difficult to clear roads for heavy vehicles and ambulances to get through. Rescue vehicles had still not reached the hotel by midday Thursday.
This photo taken from a video shows show piles of snow and rubble inside the hotel. (Italian Finance Police via AP)
The buried hotel was just one of several rescues underway: Video footage from Italian financial police force GDF 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. A resident of a town in the province of Teramo, Daiana Nguyen, 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 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. It wasn’t immediately clear if the tremors triggered the avalanche.
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.
Video shot by rescue teams showed huge piles of filthy snow and debris piled up inside the hotel 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.
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 hotel is about 30 miles from the coastal city of Pescara, at an altitude of about 3,940 feet.
An ambulance was blocked about 6 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 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. 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.
The Associated Press contributed to this article