It was one of the few holidays that Giampiero Parete, a 38-year-old chef, and his family had ever taken together – a handful of days at a spa hotel in Farindola, a popular ski resort three hours east of Rome in central Italy’s Abruzzo region.

Before the peak ski season, Parete wanted to take advantage of the discounted rates at the usually expensive Rigopiano hotel, about 3,900 feet above sea level in the lower Gran Sasso mountain range. His boss, Quintino Marcella, owner of L’Isola Felice, a restaurant in Silvi Marina, a seaside resort on the Abruzzo coast, received a message from him on Tuesday. “There was splendid sunshine, they were relaxing and enjoying the snow,” he said. On the same day the management of the Rigopiano, tweeted: “A dream Tuesday … the snow is giving us spectacular scenery!”

Barely 24 hours later, the dream turned into a nightmare after the hotel was struck by a powerful avalanche that trapped all but two of the registered guests and staff inside. Parete was one of the two. The other was Fabio Salzetta, a hotel maintenance worker. Just moments before the avalanche hit, Parete had left the hotel to get headache tablets from his car for his wife, leaving her and their two children, aged seven and six, inside. The first person he called, via WhatsApp, was his boss, who was also the first person to alert rescuers.

The call came just after 5.30pm (central European time) on Wednesday. “It was horrific,” Marcella, who has known Parete for 30 years, said. “He told me that the hotel had been buried by an avalanche. It was no longer there. I was shocked. I immediately stopped work and called for help.” However, it took some time to convince an emergency services phone operator that the avalanche had happened.

The 35 people thought to have been in the hotel when it was engulfed by the avalanche were on the ground floor awaiting evacuation after a series of earthquakes, of magnitudes between 5.1 and 5.7, had rocked the area during the day. But evacuation was delayed by bad weather. It was not until the next morning, at around 4am, that rescuers, arriving by helicopter and on skis, were able to reach the site. And it was midday before a snow plough and excavation equipment managed to pass the snow-clogged roads leading to the hotel.

Parete and Salzetta, both suffering from hypothermia, were taken to hospital at Penne, a town about 6km from the site, where a base camp for rescuers was set up. Parete then spent an agonised 24 hours believing the worst: that his wife and children, along with the others trapped under the rubble, had died. By Thursday evening, rescuers who had to dig through a two-metre wall of snow to get to the demolished hotel, had given up hope of finding anyone alive, saying: “There is no sign of life.”

As Italy, which is reeling from a series of earthquakes – the first of which killed almost 300 people last August, went into mourning over the latest tragedy, there was good news: shortly after 11am on Friday, reports came in that some people had been found alive. Among the first to be pulled out alive were Parete’s wife, Adriana, and their son, seven-year-old Gianfilipo. They were found in an air pocket close to what had been the hotel’s billiards room.

As she was lifted out of a tunnel in the snow, Adriana could be heard saying “my daughter, my daughter”. Soon after nightfall it was confirmed that six-year-old Ludovica had also been rescued. All three were taken to hospital, and the first thing Ludovica reportedly said was: “I want my biscuits.”

By Saturday afternoon, six more people had been pulled alive from the rubble, bringing the total number of survivors, including Parete and Salzetta, to 11. But it was an anxious wait for the relatives of the 23 people still missing. The bodies of five victims had been recovered by lunchtime.

Rescuers were continuing their search for survivors but with the operation now in its third day and temperatures in Farindola at 2C, they fear that anyone still alive could freeze to death. No further signs of life had been detected but optimism remained.

“There is still hope, because although no more voices have been heard, there may be people trapped behind or under a cement wall, which would make it impossible to hear them,” Enrica Centi, a spokeswoman for the mountain rescuers, told Agence France-Presse.