Thursday, January 19, 2017

“There is no snowplow” – Corriere della Sera

RIGOPIANO (PESCARA) From the top, the mattresses are blue in the snow look like big flowers. Scattered around the hotel, within a radius of 500 metres, even one stuck in a tree. Strewn with clothes and debris, tree trunks, and fragments of suitcase, pieces of life that emerge from the grip of the frost. This is what remains of the rooms of the hotel Rigopiano after the avalanche that everything has overwhelmed Wednesday afternoon: what remains of a holiday, a parenthesis of love, a bit of relaxation, the desire to see themselves mirrored in the faces famous who came here from time to time “to be a Spa” away from it all, in peace: Tornatore, D’urso, and many more, because this was a paradise a secret.

“No answer”

A foreman of the fire brigade of Pescara, at the junction of the relief above Farindola, look up with watery eyes, toward the mountain from which you just dropped, throwing behind his nightmares: “it Was three floors of the hotel. Was. Now there remain the columns, and hardly the first, bent under piles of white. It is a frightful scene”. Her murmur: “there is nothing more we will call but no one answers”. The commander of the carabinieri, the Marco Heated says that “there are between twenty-five to 35 guests, and a dozen of employees, and still uses a hopeful mind at three in the afternoon, i.e. nearly 24 hours after the disaster that was shot down here: “who died and two people rescued”, he adds. Later, the numbers change, the recovered bodies become four, the missing of at least 26, including four children; but with the passing of the hours and the thermometer, which at 1,200 metres down at night to ten or fift een below zero on these slopes of Gran Sasso above Farindola, the expression “scattered” loses solidity, becomes a prayer of finding someone still alive. The head of civil Protection, Fabrizio Curcio, with his stubborn courage, there it is: “we must Not yet despair,” and a rumor that someone to respond, a slender wire.

The mountain on the hotel

The mountain, shaken by new earthquake of these hours, he demolished the hotel, moving it up or down to a dozen metres: now sheets of ice to and fro in the hall, the entire north side was caved in and the beautiful colonnade white is embedded in the fury of the avalanche. The salon d’annunzio, with its crystal chandeliers and paintings precious is raped by debris. What remains standing, even in the cupboard — dishes, glasses, pots — takes on a sinister aspect, is unfair compared to the opening balance broken that are just below, buried under the feet of the first responders, the financiers of the mountain rescue and drive the choices of the Firefighters, rescuers in a ski that drops from the ridge in attempts at the limit of the impossible when even drills and turbines continue to struggle with gaining only a few metres every hour. Broken lives, yes, but also lives that perhaps could be saved. The public Prosecutor’s office has opened an i nvestigation for manslaughter, and the anger mount in a hurry. On Wednesday, the earth shook and the mountain was really too full of snow, so in the hotel, many of which, are blocked since Sunday, they were afraid. “At 3 in the afternoon, they were ready with the bags, they had done the express check-out, but the snow has not arrived, the have postponed till 7 in the evening,” says the resort manager, Marco, the nephew of the owner Roberto The Red, also among the missing. A girlfriend called her boyfriend: “Come on down, what are you doing there?”; he answered: “I Would like, but it’s all blocked…”.

“Sliding doors”

The mountain falls down a little after five, the death is not behind the delays and to sciatterie of anyone. And it is perhaps unfair to paint colors criminally relevant this storyline from “sliding doors”: the fate has wanted to show up here, all his whims, even in the salvation of Giampiero Wall, came out to take an aspirin in the car to the wife and a moment after the astonished and helpless spectator of the carnage just a few meters from him. Your Wall, who had there his two children eight and six years, came Wednesday evening messages distressed to four switchboards emergency and his friend Quentin tried to raise them a thousand times also on the social networks: “But nobody believed me, not even in the prefecture,” he says, stoking new anger and new controversies. It is really hazardous to distribute the weights in this horror. But, certainly, the wound can not close as well. Marcella, the manager of the spa, to the three of Wednesday afternoon called his sister: “We were told to stay on the ground floor, I go up”. Another serious error, because the Spa in the basement would be the one place in the part sheltered from the fury of white that it breaks down shortly after. Shiny eyes, the brother-in-law of Marcella now it’s here, among the rescuers at the junction of Farindola: “We need to know, to understand…”. And of course, it snows often and a lot up here. But a snow storm so not seen in thirty years, they say. Martina Rossi, who’s just nineteen, it’s even less to find peace. Living next to the bar of the Villa Cupoli, the last outpost for a cup of hot tea before you go on the path which climbs towards the mountain. Arrotondava working at the bar of the resort: “they Are save just because they are fallen the day before.” Ten of his companions were less fortunate. You appoint those who are on, hoping to be wrong on every name, and every time he ’s asking us reporters a denial of his fears, a reassurance that never comes. The chef Carlo and his aide Ilaria, the guy on the front desk, Emanuele, Gabriele, who was a waiter and all, they were all accustomed to, as she, to stay on for a long time when it was snowing hard, “there are those who in practice does not return home ever, in winter.”

“, The owner had notified”

Because sometimes, yes, the roadway narrows, closed between the walls white, and then the path that leads to the forest and the hotel becomes impracticable, inadvisable. But never as Wednesday, in a scene so critical that the alert avalanche had got to level 4 on a scale of 5. “The owner had warned, wanted to send everybody away,” recalls Martina. The owner, Roberto wanted to cautiously drive away the customers, in short, but no one has helped. Martina remains throughout the day nailed to his outpost, in front of the tv in the bar of the Villa Cupoli. In the meantime.
On, in the midst of the snow at about 1200 metres, two hundred, mighty of valour in the face of an emergency never seen, because an earthquake under an avalanche of snow no one has ever managed: and you see. The means of relief are inverted, the rescue workers often remain stuck in the gut of the mountain, the ambulance against the autoclave, the van against bulldozer, cursin g,, stand up! We’re not playing!”. It’s all pretty damn hard, everything is so unfair. “We die of cold, help us!”, is the last sms that haunt you much, for too long.

19 January, 2017 (amending the January 19, 2017 | 23:32)

© REPRODUCTION RESERVED

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