The tragedy was the deadliest avalanche in Italy in almost 100 years.
On Thursday, to mark the one-year anniversary of the disaster, victims’ relatives, local residents and representatives of the authorities and emergency services said prayers, read poems and laid a wreath of flowers outside the remains of Hotel Rigopiano as part of a commemoration day.
Events promoted by the committee representing victims’ families also included a torchlight procession to the local church, where the Archbishop of Pescara-Penne, Tommaso Valentinetti, celebrated mass.
Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Premier Paolo Gentiloni are scheduled to meet with the victims’ families in Rome on Monday.
The deadly avalanche became a tragic part of Italy’s history when it struck Hotel Rogipiano while 40 people, including guests and staff, were in the building.
The snow weighed 120,000 tonnes and hit the hotel with a speed of around 100km/h – a force equivalent to 4000 trucks.
Autopsies revealed that all but two of the 29 victims died of impact rather than hypothermia.
Coroners said that at least one of the victims, 29-year-old hotel waiter Gabriele D’Angelo, could have survived had he been reached by rescuers within two hours.
Alpine rescue crews were mobilised in Farindola almost two hours after the first call to emergency services.
They reached the site several hours after the incident and had to travel on foot, on skis and by helicopter as the roads were blocked by heavy snow.
An investigation was opened within 24 hours of the tragedy and is still ongoing a year later.
Prosecutors are investigating 23 people including regional and local authorities, mayors, a police chief and others responsible for disaster prevention and management, for possible negligence leading to injury and death.
Investigators suspect that local authorities had not taken calls for help from two people who escaped the hotel seriously enough, therefore not responding quickly enough.
There are four main lines of inquiry: whether local authorities should have acted sooner in dangerous weather conditions; whether they failed to take measures that could have sped up the rescue effort, such as sending in snow ploughs and closing roads to traffic; whether they should have given planning permission to the hotel in the first place, since it was in an avalanche danger zone; and whether regional authorities should have ordered evacuations and other avalanche precautions days earlier.
Investigators are expected to present their findings a few weeks after the one-year anniversary of the disaster.
