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'Can I have my biscuits please?' says girl dug out of Italy avalanche
By Nick Squires
Penne, Italy: For a little girl who had just survived an extraordinary ordeal, trapped for two days and nights beneath a tsunami of snow, ice and rock, it was a disarmingly ordinary question.
"Can I have my biscuits, please?" six-year-old Ludovica Parete asked Italian rescue experts as they gently lifted her out of the tiny space that had kept her and two other children alive for 48 hours after the four-star Hotel Rigopiano was struck by a terrifying avalanche.
She had carefully stashed a small packet of chocolate biscuits in her bag, ready for the journey home, with her parents and brother, from the spa resort in the Apennine mountains - a journey that never happened after Wednesday's devastating avalanche.
The little girl was one of nine people extracted alive from the wreckage of the resort by Saturday afternoon, with reports that rescuers had located another two people who were alive beneath the snow. But as the number of living rose, so too did the death toll - so far five bodies have been recovered, all of them adults.
One of the three children rescued from the Rigopiano Hotel is transported to a hospital in Pescara.Credit: ANSA via AP
Ludovica is the daughter of Giampiero Parete, the resort guest who first raised the alarm when the four-storey hotel, in the mountainous Abruzzo region, was hit by an avalanche so powerful that it swept parts of the building 10 metres down the side of the mountain.
She, her brother and two other children were rescued from the smashed ruins of the hotel, a success that was greeted with immense joy and relief throughout Italy.
Exhausted Alpine rescue specialists, medics and police had found something to smile about after two days of desperate digging for survivors, using shovels, picks and their hands rather than machinery, for fear of harming people trapped beneath the snow or causing further structural collapse.
Although very cold, the children were in reasonable physical and mental condition and stunned rescuers with their good spirits.
Rescuers work with shovels at the buried hotel.Credit: AP
"Wow, look at all the snow," said nine-year-old Edoardo Di Carlo. "Can we go skiing?"
He said he had been in the hotel's games room when the avalanche struck at around 5pm, along with Ludovica and seven-year-old Samuel Di Michelangelo. Samuel's father, a police officer, and mother are still missing.
A rescue worker speaks to one of the child survivors.Credit: ANSA via AP
Edoardo appeared remarkably lucid as he was carried away in the darkness on a stretcher, despite spending more than 48 hours trapped beneath the rubble and snow in freezing temperatures.
"What happened? How long has it been? I was playing billiards with some other kids," the boy said, according to Lorenzo Gagliardi, the police Alpine rescue officer who was the first to reach the hotel in the early hours of Thursday after leading in his team on skis through a snow storm.
Simona Di Carlo, the aunt of Edoardo Di Carlo, one of three children pulled out of the hotel, arrives at the hospital in Pescara.Credit: ANSA via AP
"How many kids were with you?" rescuers asked. "Three," the boy answered. "All the adults were in another room. The only adult I could hear crying out was the mummy of Ludovica."
Ludovica's Romanian-born mother, Adriana Vranceanu, who was also hauled out of the wreckage, said she had been terrified that the smashed remains of the hotel might become an icy grave for her and her children. She revealed that she was not able to see her daughter, because the girl was in another tiny space, divided by a collapsed wall or section of roof.
Rescuers at work on the site of the Rigopiano Hotel, buried beneath more than five metres of snow.Credit: AP
But she was able to talk to her daughter during their nightmare ordeal.
"Once I realised we were all alive I was sure the worst was over and we would be rescued," she told a cousin. "But the time passed so slowly and I began to fear the worst. I stopped believing we would be found."
The interior of the avalanche-hit Rigopiano Hotel.Credit: AP
Salvation finally came - rescuers freed her, along with her eight-year-old son Gianfilippo, on Friday, a few hours before her daughter was pulled out alive.
Giampiero Parete, the guest who initially raised the alarm after surviving the avalanche, was reunited with his wife and two children yesterday, having thought he would never see them again. "Thank you everyone from my heart," he wrote on Facebook.
Emergency staff said the children and adults survived in part because they happened to be wearing items of ski clothing when the avalanche buried the hotel, and in part because the five metres of snow on top of them insulated them from the biting cold and driving winds.
Sniffer dogs helped locate the survivors, along with sensitive equipment that can detect the faint pulse of mobile phone signals.
Around 20 people are still missing out of the estimated 35 who were at the hotel, including guests and staff. Rescue teams will continue to work night and day until everyone is accounted for, said Luca Cari, a spokesman for the fire service.
They hope that other people are still in air pockets beneath the snow, but with every passing night, hopes diminish.
Authorities have been criticised for failing to evacuate the hotel as exceptionally heavy snow fell earlier this week. Prosecutors have opened a manslaughter investigation and will try to determine whether warnings about bad weather and the avalanche risk were ignored.
Telegraph, London