Nine years after the Rigopiano tragedy, the verdict of the appeal bis is expected on 11 February

Nine years ago 29 people were killed on 18 January 2017 by an avalanche of snow and debris that swept through and destroyed the Hotel Rigopiano in Farindola. Eleven employees of the facility and 18 guests died. There were 11 survivors. It was only a few minutes before 5 p.m. when the avalanche, weighing about 120,000 tonnes, swept over and destroyed the resort, which stood 1,200 metres above sea level on the Pescara side of the Gran Sasso. There were 40 people in the hotel that day, including four children.

The alarm was raised via mobile phones by two people who were outside the building: hotel maintenance worker Fabio Salzetta and a guest, Giampiero Parete, who had his wife and children under the rubble. They were both outside the structure: Salzetta was in the boiler room and Parete in his car. The rescue machine was activated very late, only after 7.30 p.m., as the first phone calls were not considered reliable by the prefecture of Pescara, partly due to conflicting information provided by the hotel manager, who was in another location. The rescue arrived very late, about 20 hours after the avalanche, due to the isolation caused by the snow and the extreme weather conditions. The first mountain rescue teams only reached the hotel at dawn on 19 January, after a difficult walk with skis and snowshoes. Only two of the survivors were outside the hotel. The other survivors who were extracted alive were on the ground floor of the building: five in the billiard room, rescued on 20 January, four in the fireplace area of the bar (rescued on the morning of 21 January). The deceased were in the kitchen (10), in the lobby (17) and two in the fireplace area.

"An open and bleeding wound", remember the relatives of the victims, who have gathered at 3pm to remember the tragedy. A day of recollection and remembrance at the place where, as they write on social media, 'it was the beginning of the end'. And they call for a 'renewed demand for truth and justice'. A day marked by the torchlight procession to the obelisk. Then the flag-raising with the silence intoned by the trumpet, the laying of flowers and wreaths. And the mass at the site of the tragedy, with the reading of the names of the 29 victims and the laying of 29 white roses. At 4.49 p.m., the time when the avalanche reached the hotel, the Pacini choir from Atri sang 'Signore delle Cime', + accompanied by 29 white balloons released into the sky.

Un momento della cerimonia per l'anniversario della tragedia dell'hotel Rigopiano di Farindola (Pescara), travolto e distrutto, il 18 gennaio del 2017, da una valanga che provocò la morte di 29 persone. (ANSA/Ufficio Stampa Regione Abruzzo)

There were 40 people in the hotel that day, including four children. 29 people died: the youngest was 22, the oldest 60. Here are the names of the victims, lest we forget: Valentina Cicioni, Marco Tanda, Jessica Tinari, Tobia Foresta, Bianca Iudicone, Stefano Feniello, Marina Serraiocco, Domenico Di Michelangelo, Piero Di Pietro, Rosa Barbara Nobilio, Sebastiano Di Carlo, Nadia Acconciamessa, Sara Angelozzi, Claudio Baldini, Luciano Caporale, Silvana Angelucci, Marco Vagnarelli, Paola Tomassini, Linda Salzetta, Alessandro Giancaterino, Cecilia Martella, Emanuele Bonifazi, Luana Biferi, Marinella Colangeli, Alessandro Riccetti, Ilaria Di Biase, Roberto Del Rosso, Gabriele D'Angelo, Dame Faye.

Among the victims was Ilaria Di Biase, from Archi (Chieti), who worked as a cook in the destroyed hotel. 'She had simple dreams,' recalled her mother, Mariangela Di Giorgio, 'and a great passion for her work, carried out with dedication and love.' Ilari's family will also be there 'at the site of the disaster, with death in our hearts and tears in our eyes, because for us time has never passed. Every 18 January is like reliving it all over again. Ilaria was not just a daughter, she was a girl full of life, who loved to cook and take care of others. She died while doing her job, and that makes it all the more unfair'. Now, she writes on social media, 'only a half-breathing mother remains, surviving by chasing a justice that probably won't come'. It is 'a lacerating pain, that no one can see and feel, a pain that does not pass but increases with each passing day, that will accompany me until the end of my days. Our hearts cry out for justice. No more blame-shifting, no more responsibility being lost in courts and offices. Those who did wrong must pay, for Ilaria and for the other 28 angels of Rigopiano. We do not ask for revenge, but for respect and truth'.