In January 2017, snow began to fall across the Apennines. From his home in the Rome suburbs, Edward watched the weather with concern. He and his wife，Caroline, had planned an overnight getaway to the hotel. But now he wondered whether they should go with the road covered with snow. Edward phoned the hotel, whose owner, Del Rosso, advised Edward to use chains on his tyres.
After a short talk, Edward and Caroline decided to make the trip.By the time they neared the resort (度假胜地) six hours later, they were battling a total whiteout. When they finally reached the hotel, they were cold and exhausted. They checked into their room, trying to forget their long day in the car.
Suddenly, the hotel began to shake. The windows rattled, and the water in the tub spilt over the edges. An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.7 had struck the mountain. Edward had had enough. "Let's get out of here，" he told his wife, dressing quickly. They were about to head to the parking lot when the snow on the mountain began to slide.
Martin, the resort's caretaker, had been working in the tiny boiler hut about 30 yards from the main building when he noticed something abnormal. Standing on an empty snowfield, he gazed at a trail of completedestruction—it was as if a giant rake (耙子) had been dragged down the mountain, pulling down beech trees, crushing cars, chewing up everything in its path.
Finding a signal with his phone seemed to take forever. In fact, it took two hours before Martin finally spoke with the chief of the region's rescue team.
"We're coming," Crocetta promised.
"How long will it take？" asked Martin.
"Five or six hours."
Eight hours after Martin had talked to Crocetta, the rescuers finally arrived.There was no movement anywhere—no human sound, just rubble (碎石). Edward lay in a coffinsized pocket of air beneath 30 feet of snow, ice, and rubble. He could hear nothing of what was happening at the surface. Shock had set in, and he felt no pain, no hunger, no cold. Each time Edward awoke, he faced a new terrible reality: he was buried alive. Despair suddenly seized him. He asked himself, who is going to save us?
Nick and three other rescuers kept digging on, breaking blade after blade on their circular saws (圆锯), battling toward a faint cell signal detected deep in the ruins. Suddenly they heard a voice. They silenced their saws and listened. It was Edward.He was still fading in and out of consciousness. A vision of his wife stayed with him, an angel of mercy, he thought. She assured him he would be OK.
"Edward, we are here！" Nick shouted, ten feet above where the trapped man lay. "Are you injured？Are you bleeding？"
As the voices and the buzzing of saws grew louder, Edward became more alert. "Where is my wife？"
"We put her in the car because it's cold," Nick lied.
At last, at around six in the morning, Nick's saw broke through a final thick layer of insulation (隔绝). He pointed his light toward the opening and spotted Edward's back. Nick could see how the angled beams had created a cocoon that prevented Edward from being crushed to death. Those near him had not been so lucky: Squeezed in the space with him were the bodies of two women—one supporting his head, one curled (卷曲) beneath his left leg.
Rescuers raised the concrete beams off Edward's limbs with a jack (千斤顶). "You are a superhero，" Nick said as he reached beneath Edward's armpits and gently lifted him out of his tomb.
Five days after his rescue, Edward was given the heartbroken news that his wife had died. Her body had been found, crushed by debris, near where Edward had been trapped. The angel who had appeared to him in his dreams had, somehow, never left his side.
