Mother and son pulled alive from Italian avalanche debris; 8 more survivors found

Ten people have been found alive in the debris of an Italian hotel that was engulfed by an avalanche, firefighters have said.

Mother and son pulled alive from Italian avalanche debris; 8 more survivors found

A mother and her son have been pulled out alive after an avalanche hit a hotel in central Italy on Wednesday.

They have been taken to hospital after they were freed from the rubble by firefighters.

Eight other survivors have been found; efforts to free them are on-going.

Spokesman Luca Cari gave the update from the Hotel Rigopiano in central Italy as rescue workers continued trying to extract survivors from the collapsed buildings in the resort north east of Rome.

Helicopters are ferrying the survivors to a hospital in Pescara on the Adriatic coast.

Rescuers said four bodies have been found since the avalanche struck on Wednesday afternoon.

News of the survivors boosted spirits two days after the massive snow slide buried around 30 people in the resort.

Video released by rescuers showed a boy, wearing blue ski trousers and a matching shirt, emerging from the hotel and crews mussing his hair in celebration.

Next was a woman with a long ponytail wearing red ski trousers. "Brava Brava!" the rescuers cheered.

The survivors appeared fully alert and walking on their own, but both were helped down to a stretcher for a helicopter ride out.

"This first news has obviously repaid all the rescuers' efforts," deputy interior minister Filippo Bubbico said.

Titi Postiglione, operations chief of the civil protection agency, said the survivors "can give us a series of indications to help with our intervention plan, information to understand what happened and help direct the search".

Rescue workers told RAI state television the survivors' conditions were remarkably good, and that they had survived thanks to an air pocket in the kitchen. They are being flown by helicopter to local hospitals.

About 30 people were trapped inside the luxury Hotel Rigopiano when the avalanche hit on Wednesday afternoon, with two people initially surviving the devastation and calling for help.

Search and rescue teams had maintained the hope of finding survivors even though the avalanche dumped up to 17ft of snow on the hotel.

The operations have been hampered by difficulty in accessing the remote hotel. Workers have been clearing a 5.5-mile road to bring in heavier equipment but it can only handle one-way traffic.

A convoy of rescue vehicles made slow progress to the hotel, blocked by snow piled 10ft high in some places, fallen trees and rocks.

The first rescue teams arrived on skis early on Thursday, and firefighters were dropped in by helicopter. Snowmobiles were also used.

Days of heavy snowfall had knocked out electricity and phone lines in many central Italian towns and hamlets, and the hotel phones went down early on Wednesday, just as the first of four powerful earthquakes struck the region.

It was not clear if the quakes triggered the avalanche, but emergency responders said the force of the massive snow slide collapsed a wing of the hotel that faced the mountain and rotated another off its foundation, pushing it downhill.

One of the survivors reported that the guests had all checked out and were waiting for the road to be cleared to leave. The snow plough scheduled for mid-afternoon never arrived, and the avalanche hit sometime around 5.30pm on Wednesday.

Prosecutors have opened a manslaughter investigation into the tragedy, and among the hypotheses being pursued is whether the avalanche threat was not taken seriously enough, according to Italian media.

Farindola mayor Ilario Lacchetta said the hotel had 24 guests, four of them children, and 12 employees were onsite at the time of the avalanche.

- AP

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