Rome: As many as 30 people were missing after an avalanche barrelled into a mountainside hotel in central Italy, civil protection officials said on Thursday local time, a day after four earthquakes struck the region, which has been hit hard in recent months.
The latest seismic activity, which prompted officials to close schools and the subway system in Rome as a precaution, shifted the nation's attention back to areas in central Italy that were devastated by a series of temblors last year, leading to criticism that victims had been left to fend for themselves.
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Avalanche hits hotel in central Italy
Rescue workers struggle to find survivors in an Italian mountain hotel, after tremors triggered an avalanche on the building.
Fabrizio Curcio, the chief of the civil protection department, told RAI News that search-and-rescue teams had reached the hotel but that the situation there presented an enormous challenge.
Rescue workers, including dog units, were moving with caution, he said, and some emergency-response teams reported no signs of survivors.
News channels in Italy showed images of the roof collapsed on the hotel, the Rigopiano, and before-and-after photographs suggesting that much of the structure had been buried by the avalanche.
Other images showed corridors piled high with snow, leaves and branches and rescue workers digging through the snow and carrying at least one person to safety.
Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said the rescue effort presented officials with "unprecedented" difficulties, describing the area as caught in a vise after intense snowfall "that hadn't been recorded for decades" and the strong earthquakes in the area on Wednesday.
The epicentres of the four earthquakes were in central Italy, which has been hit by deadly quakes with increasing frequency in recent years. Officials registered more than 100 aftershocks Wednesday.
![An aerial view shows the hotel Rigopiano buried by snow.](/web/20170120035057im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/u/z/4/w/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtuyfy.png/1484852893988.jpg)
Sky TG24 television said that at least three people had died at the Rigopiano, which is described on its website as a "posh mountainside hotel resort with spa" in the town of Farindola, nestled in the mountains.
There were fears that the death toll would rise significantly. In a message on social media, the Fire Department, which is involved in rescue efforts, said firefighters had arrived at the hotel but "at the moment, no signals from the missing."
![Piles of snow and rubble cascading into the foyer of the hotel Rigopiano after an avalanche.](/web/20170120035057im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/u/z/k/q/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtuyfy.png/1484852893988.jpg)
"The hotel is almost completely destroyed. We've called out but we've heard no replies, no voices," said Antonio Crocetta, a member of the Alpine Rescue squad who was on the scene.
"We're digging and looking for people," he told Reuters by phone from the isolated location.
![Rescuers found the hotel buried in deep snow when they arrived early on Thursday morning.](/web/20170120035057im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/u/z/m/m/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtuyfy.png/1484873602956.jpg)
Emergency vehicles tried to assist Alpine rescue teams in the region, part of the Gran Sasso National Park, but rescue efforts were hampered by heavy snow on roads, the civil protection agency said.
![Heavy snow blanketed the region, contributing to the death of an elderly man.](/web/20170120035057im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/u/z/1/9/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtuyfy.png/1484852893988.jpg)
Francesco Provolo, the prefect of Pescara, the province that includes Farindola, told RAI that rescuers had to travel more than 8 kilometres on skis and snowshoes to reach the hotel, as billowing snow continued to fall throughout the night.
A spokesman for the civil protection department in Pescara estimated that up to 30 people were in the hotel at the time of the avalanche. The four-star hotel has 43 rooms, but it was not clear how many guests were staying there at the time of the avalanche.
Search-and-rescue efforts continued at the hotel, which officials said had been swept from its foundations by the avalanche. Walter Milan, a spokesman for a specialised Alpine rescue team, told RAI that rescuers were examining the scene of the avalanche section by section "to exclude that people remained trapped underneath."
In the nearby hamlet of Ortolano, 21 people were airlifted by helicopter to the airport in L'Aquila, said a spokesman for the Italian Financial Police, which was involved in the rescue operations.
Gentiloni praised the courage of rescue workers trying to reach the hotel, and he said the country's "heart and mind" were closely following their efforts.
He called on the country's civil protection department, army and rescue teams working to reach people in isolated hamlets throughout central Italy to redouble their efforts.
"Everyone is doing as much as they can" to reach people, clear roads and bring electricity to areas that have been cut off for days, the prime minister said. "But I ask all operators to increase their commitment. They have shown that they exist, are present, and are working -- but I ask them, if possible, to do even more."
Three quakes in central Italy last year killed nearly 300 people in and around the medieval town of Amatrice; on Wednesday, the tower of one of that town's churches was destroyed by temblors.
In 2009, the town of L'Aquila was devastated by an earthquake that killed more than 300 people.
The latest earthquakes were a new setback for thousands of commercial, industrial and agricultural enterprises in four central Italian regions that have been struggling to recover from the natural disasters of the summer and fall.
Coldiretti, an agricultural trade association, said that countless animals had been killed or wounded because barn roofs had collapsed under the weight of the snow and that blocked roads impeded farmers from reaching their farms to feed and care for their livestock.
Many of the 3000 farms in the earthquake areas are isolated and unreachable because of the persistent snowfalls that are blocking the delivery of feed, the association said in a statement, which noted that milk production had also dropped drastically.
The National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology said that more than 47,000 temblors and aftershocks had rattled the region since August and that there was no sign the situation would change anytime soon.
After the L'Aquila quake, the earth shook for four years, even though it wasn't always perceptible to people, said Carlo Meletti, the director of the seismic hazard centre at the institute.
"We expect the sequence will last for many weeks," he said. "After yesterday's quakes, it is as though it has picked up in vigor.
"We have always said that there were strong possibilities of new, stronger earthquakes, and now a new fault has opened," he continued. "The one thing we don't know is when they will occur or where because the area that has been affected by the quakes is so vast."
Meletti said in a telephone interview that it was unclear if the avalanche was a direct result of the earthquakes Wednesday but that a link was possible "considering that a lot of snow had fallen in a very short time and it was very unstable."
On Thursday, thousands of snowbound residents in the area were without electricity after already having had service interruptions in the previous days because of the heavy snowfall.
Echoing a refrain heard after the earthquakes last year, many residents complained on social media that they had been abandoned, even as officials pledged that they were doing everything they could to reach stranded towns and hamlets.
"Only the earthquake remembers the earthquake victims," a banner headline on the front page of the newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano read Thursday.
New York Times