Toll from Italy avalanche climbs to 17 as hopes diminish

Hopes faded today that any more survivors of the devastating avalanche that buried an Italian resort hotel would be found after the death toll more than doubled to 17, with 12 people still unaccounted for.
As Italy's central Abruzzo region and its rescue crews coped with the ongoing emergency, a second tragedy unfolded nearby when an emergency helicopter crashed at an Apennine ski resort, killing six people.
The twin disasters, which followed a series of earthquakes and weeks of heavy snow, have brought the region to its knees. Thousands of people have been without electricity for over a week and emergency crews have been working around the clock.

The helicopter was ferrying an injured skier off the slopes of the Campo Felice ski area when it slammed into a mountainside buried in thick fog. Five crew members and the skier were killed.
Emergency workers at the center where rescue efforts at the avalanche-entombed Hotel Rigopiano are being coordinated rushed to the chopper crash site about 100 kilometers (60 miles) away. Crews on the ground at the scene hugged one another in solidarity.
The death toll from the January 18 avalanche, meanwhile, climbed to 17 today with the discovery of 10 more bodies. Twelve people remained missing. Nine people previously had been pulled out alive from the rubble, the last one early Saturday.

Firefighters' spokesman Alberto Maiolo said search crews aided by excavators finally were able to penetrate the central part of the hotel for the first time and found bodies in the bar and kitchen area.
"Logically, hopes fade as time passes, but we are continuing to search and trying to do it as quickly as possible," he said.
The first funerals were held today, with crowds gathering under a steady rain outside the hilltop church in Farindola to pay their respects to Alessandro Giancaterino, the hotel's chief waiter.