Italy crews work through night after avalanche hits hotel
Rescue crews who reached the four-star mountain resort on skis found only eerie silence Thursday after a huge avalanche flattened the hotel, trapping more than 30 people inside. Two bodies were recovered, but the search for survivors was hampered by heavy snowfall and fears the buildings would collapse.
Two people escaped the devastation at the Hotel Rigopiano in the mountains of central Italy and called for help. But it took hours for responders to verify their claims and arrive at the remote earthquake-stricken zone. They worked through the night, but hopes were dimming of finding survivors.
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 Wednesday, just as the first of four powerful earthquakes struck the region. It wasn't 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.
