About a dozen people are believed
to have survived an avalanche that wrecked an Abruzzo hotel,
leaving an unspecified number unaccounted-for, rescuers said
Friday after an initial report that some 35 staff and guests
were there when the wall of snow engulfed the building.
Three children were pulled out of the rubble of the Hotel
Rigapiano after more than 40 hours in the ruins, firefighters
said.
Before them, the son and the wife of the survivor who raised
the alarm without a response for a long time Wednesday,
Giampiero Parete, were rescued.
Another five or six people may be pulled out alive over the
coming hours, rescuers said.
Alessandro Giancaterino is one of the two verified victims
of the avalanche.
Giancaterino was the brother of the former mayor of the local
ski town, Farindola, and was the resort's head waiter, local
sources said.
There were other victims of the weave of bad weather that has
hit central Italy near the Abruzzo town of Teramo, local
officials said.
A 74-year-old man was found dead in a stable in the hamlet of
Faiete, having succumbed either to hypothermia or the carbon
monoxide fumes from a nearby generator.
One of two people missing since yesterday at Poggio
Umbricchio, part of the mountain village of Crognaleto, has also
died.
Termao fire services found Mattia Marinelli, 23, whose father
is missing.
At Ortolano, part of Campotosto near L'Aquila, the body of an
elderly man hit by an avalanche was found and the local mayor
sounded the alarm over a landslide threwatening to set off
another avalanche there on Monte Corno'.
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