Italy remembers Rigopiano avalanche victims seven years on

(ANSA) - ROME, JAN 18 - Italy on Thursday marked the seventh anniversary of the Rigopiano Hotel avalanche disaster in Abruzzo that claimed 29 lives.
    The avalanche hit the hotel in Farindola on January 18, 2017 as 40 people, including guests and staff, were inside waiting for help following extreme weather conditions and a series of earthquakes in the area.
    Most of the 29 victims were instantly crushed to death. Eleven people survived.
    Rescuers reached the site several hours after the avalanche and had to travel on foot because roads had been blocked by heavy snow.
    "Seven years after the unforgettable Rigopiano tragedy, we renew our closeness to the relatives of the 29 victims and to the entire Abruzzo community and join them in their call for justice," said Senate Speaker Ignazio La Russa.
    Last February a preliminary hearings judge in Pescara convicted five people and acquitted 25 others in relation to the tragedy, amid strong protests from victims' relatives in the courtroom.
    The 30 defendants, including administrators and public officials, as well as the manager and owner of the hotel, were charged in various capacities with the offences of culpable disaster, multiple culpable homicide, injuries, forgery, deception and building abuse.
    The mayor of Farindola was found guilty and got two years and eight months in jail while two former officials, the ex prefect of Pescara and the ex provincial president, were among those acquitted.
    The appeal judgement is scheduled for February 9.
    Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said the memory of the victims "must spur us to work so that similar tragedies do not happen again".
    Tajani also recalled "with gratitude the heroic work carried out by the rescuers, in particular by the finance police, whose staff at the L'Aquila Alpine rescue station were the first to reach the structure still isolated by the snow, providing aid to the people trapped inside and contributing decisively to containing the tragic toll induced by the avalanche". (ANSA).