'A dozen' survived hotel avalanche

(ANSA) - Rome, January 20 - 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'.