Thursday, January 19, 2017

My sincerest sympathies for families and friends of any lost. I am hoping there are none lost.

I tend to hope against hope none are dead, because, in the year 2017 we should be able to beat this stuff. I never say surrender. I never embrace death as inevitable. No one else should either.

If I am not mistaken, the USA Park Service in some instances provides ID radio markers to hikers. I would like to think that current technology could be applied to areas such as Italy to facilitate a quick response to those that are trapped and/or lost. Wearing a radio marker also makes people think about their safety and how it is secured in uncertain times.

January 19, 2017
By Stefano Pitrelli

 Italian rescuers (click here) dug frantically Thursday through a wall of snow and splintered trees that buried a resort hotel after an avalanche was shaken loose by a string of earthquakes, trapping at least 30 people, including children. Some bodies were found, and officials feared many more were dead.

Deep snow in the central Abruzzo region — which also was battered by major quakes last summer — slowed efforts to reach the Hotel Rigopiano, located off a hairpin-path alpine road at about 4,000 feet....