Crews dig for Italian avalanche survivors
Rescuers have dug all night in deep snow and debris in search of some 30 missing people who were staying in a luxury mountain hotel in Italy when an avalanche struck almost two days ago.
Two bodies have been recovered, and Italian state media reported on Friday another two had been found in the snow as hopes of finding survivors dimmed.
The search and rescue operation after Wednesday's avalanche has been hampered by snow blocking the only road to the Hotel Rigopiano and fears of triggering a fresh avalanche.
The disaster struck the hotel in central Italy late on Wednesday afternoon amid a driving snowstorm, just hours after four earthquakes with a magnitude above 5.0 rattled the area.
Fire brigade officials and local authorities said more than 30 people, including four children, had been in the building when the avalanche slammed into it, reducing much of it to rubble and spreading debris across the valley floor.
"We're still looking," Fire Brigade spokesman Luca Cari said by telephone on Friday.
"Canine units are helping and we are digging."
The government will meet on Friday morning and is expected to declare a state of emergency.
An investigation into the tragedy has been opened by a court in nearby Pescara, with some saying the emergency response was slow.
The first rescuers arrived amid a snow storm on skis early on Thursday morning, about 11 hours after the avalanche hit.
Two people escaped the devastation at the Hotel Rigopiano in the quake-stricken mountains of central Italy and called for help.
But it took hours for responders to arrive at the remote hotel, about 45km from the coastal city of Pescara, at an altitude of about 1200m.
One of the survivors reported the guests had all checked out and were waiting for the road to be cleared to be able to leave.
The snow plough scheduled for midafternoon never arrived, and the avalanche hit about 5.30pm on Wednesday.
An Alpine rescue team was the first to arrive on cross-country skis and found Giampaolo Parete, a guest who escaped the avalanche when he went to his car to get something, and Fabio Salzetta, a hotel maintenance worker, in a car in the resort's parking lot.
Parete, whose wife and two children remain among the missing, was taken to a hospital while Salzetta stayed behind with rescuers to help identify where guests might be buried, rescuers said.
It was not clear if the quakes triggered the avalanche, but emergency responders said the force of the slide collapsed a wing of the hotel that faced the mountain and rotated another off its foundation.
