Survivors of the devastating avalanche in Italy last week are beginning to tell their harrowing stories and recount how they managed to escape the freak natural disaster alive with the help of “angel” rescuers.
Days after the Italian rescuers hit the popular central Italian hotel spot to rescue the victims stuck underneath piles of snow from a massive avalanche, survivors who were saved by national officials provided insight into their 58-hour ordeal, which included eating snow and ice to survive.
A 22-year-old female survivor explained how her faith was tested as she laid stuck underneath the avalanche hoping for someone to rescue her, highlighting that “the last few hours were the worst.”
Girogia Galassi was one of the first nine individuals evacuated to safety from the snowstorm and is now speaking out about the first moments in a one-minute video.
When the avalanche first hit, she said, “it felt like a bomb.”
“I felt glass exploding all around me,” she said while sitting next to fellow survivor Vincenzo Forti.
“We could hear the rescuers. The rescuers were already outside. But him, me and the other girl who was near us were absolutely all exhausted,” she explained.
At one point, they ran out of ice. “We couldn’t find any more,” she said. Water was their lifeline, and at the realization of having no more access to it, things understandably got a little panicked once they realized they had nothing left to sustain their bodies in any way.
“When we heard a rescuer, it was as if an angel was talking to us, as if someone had come to pick us up literally from under the ground.”
“I was born again. It was a miracle,” Galassi said of the moment she was saved.
“It was a miracle” – survivors of the Italy avalanche tell their story: https://t.co/ftlrCdPR9xpic.twitter.com/cVrajZdknQ
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) January 25, 2017
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