PENNE, Italy -- Rescue workers reported no signs of life Thursday at a four-star hotel buried by an avalanche in the mountains of earthquake-stricken central Italy. Two bodies were recovered of the estimated 30 people trapped inside as the risk of more avalanches slowed the search effort.
Two people escaped the devastation at the Rigopiano Hotel, in the mountains of the Gran Sasso range, and called for help, but it took hours for responders to reach the remote zone on skis.
Days of heavy snowfall had knocked out electricity and phone lines in many central Italian towns and hamlets, and four earthquakes struck the region Wednesday.
It wasn't immediately clear if any of the quakes triggered the avalanche. But firefighters said the sheer violence of the 300-yard-wide snow slide on Wednesday uprooted trees in its wake and wiped out parts of the hotel.
"There are mattresses that are hundreds of meters away from where the building was," firefighters' spokesman Luca Cari told the ANSA news agency.
The hotel in the Abruzzo region is about 30 miles from the coastal city of Pescara, at an elevation of about 3,940 feet. The area, which has been buried under as much as 9 feet of snow for days, is in the region of central Italy between Rieti and Teramo that was jolted by Wednesday's quakes, one of which had a magnitude of 5.7.
Accounts emerged of hotel guests messaging rescuers and friends for help Wednesday, with at least one attempt at raising the alarm rebuffed for several hours.
Giampiero Parete, a chef vacationing at the hotel, called his boss when the avalanche struck and begged him to mobilize rescue crews. His employer, Quintino Marcella, said Parete's wife, Adriana, and two children, Ludovica and Gianfilippo, were trapped inside.
Parete had left the hotel briefly to get some medicine for his wife from their car, and survived as a result.
"He said the hotel was submerged and to call rescue crews," Marcella said, adding that he phoned police and the Pescara prefect's office, but that no one believed him. "The prefect's office said it wasn't true, because everything was OK at the hotel."
Marcella said he called other emergency numbers until someone finally took him seriously and mobilized rescuers at 8 p.m., more than two hours later.
When rescuers on skis arrived at the hotel early Thursday, they found just two people: Parete and Fabio Salzetta, identified by Italian media outlets as a hotel maintenance worker. There were no other signs of life, with rescue crews saying their shouts received no replies.
Walter Milan, spokesman for the National Alpine rescue corps, said rescue teams tried to reach the site in a snowplow but were blocked by uprooted trees and rocks on the road. Crews put on cross-country skis for the final 4-mile, two-hour stretch to reach the hotel.
"The access is not easy; the bad weather didn't help. There is a lot of snow but I have to say that our work is going on quickly considering the size of the avalanche," Milan told reporters in Penne, the staging area for the rescue.
He said the search effort consisted first of doing a sight and sound survey of the area, and then breaking up the disaster zone into smaller pockets and moving to investigate each quadrant.
Heavy equipment -- snowplows and other earthmoving equipment -- were struggling to reach the area and only 25 vehicles had arrived, along with 135 rescue workers, said Civil Protection operations chief Titi Postiglione. She said the risk of further avalanches was slowing the delicate work.
"It's an enormously complex situation, and we are very concerned," she said.
Parete was being treated for hypothermia at a hospital in Pescara. The Romanian Foreign Ministry reported three Romanian citizens missing in the hotel -- an adult and two children, who were believed to be Parete's family.
The buried hotel was just one of several rescues underway: Police video showed a gray-haired man being led to safety by rescuers through a path dug through deep snow elsewhere in the region.
Snow continued to fall Thursday with reports of people isolated in many places. Daiana Nguyen, a resident of a town in the province of Teramo, told SKY TG24 that 10 feet of snow had fallen and that people were "completely isolated."
"They talk about sending in the army. Thirty to 40 men came with shovels. We need heavy machinery," she said.
The mountainous region of central Italy has been struck by a series of quakes since August that destroyed homes and historic centers in dozens of towns and hamlets. A deadly quake in August killed nearly 300 people. No one died in the strong aftershocks in October largely because population centers had been evacuated.
A Section on 01/20/2017