FARINDOLA, Italy -- Some of the lucky ones were sipping hot tea near the fireplace in their mountain resort hotel, waiting for snowplows to arrive so they could go home, after a winter holiday made nerve-wracking by a day of ground-shaking earthquakes and heavy snowfall.

Suddenly, Vincenzo Forti and girlfriend Giorgia Galassi were knocked violently off a wicker sofa. A few other guests nearby tumbled off their chairs in the elegant reception hall.

An avalanche of snow -- and not a powerful earthquake as survivors first imagined -- had just barreled down the mountainside Wednesday evening, smashing into the Hotel Rigopiano and trapping more than 30 holiday-makers, including four children, and workers inside.

On Sunday evening, rescuers spotted a man's body in the wreckage, raising to six the number of confirmed dead. Twenty-three others remained missing, with hopes dependent on whether anyone might have found survival in an air pocket searchers hadn't yet reached.

While the nine people who eventually were rescued, including all the children, remained hospitalized Sunday, some details of their survival began emerging through family, friends and rescuers who spoke with them at their bedside or by telephone.

Among the details: the isolation, because the snow absorbed any sound from the outside world.

"There were four of us, in front of the fireplace, drinking tea," Galassi recalled.

Suddenly, "everything collapsed on top of us, and I didn't understand anything anymore," Galassi, a 22-year-old university student, told Radio Giulianova, a radio station in her hometown of the Adriatic coastal town of Giulianova, where Forti, 25, owns a seaside pizzeria.

Cut off from the outside world, the couple heard no sound. But "we were convinced that someone would come, because it was impossible they wouldn't be aware of us," Galassi said. "We banged until I couldn't anymore; we yelled."

"It was like we were in a tin can," she said.

There was no food, but there was ice, from the avalanche.

"We ate ice; that was our fortune," Galassi said.

Forti's fishing buddy, Luigi Valiante, added details, telling reporters after visiting him in a hospital Sunday the young man "realizes he is a miraculous survivor. Also considering where he was -- a square meter (space) in the cold, without lights, with a broken sofa, a girder splitting it up."

Until their cellphone batteries ran out, survivors had some light. Then it was dark, Valiante said.

Another survivor was near the couple. Francesca Bronzi was trying to find where her boyfriend, Stefano Feniello, ended up.

Bronzi's parents, Vanessa and Gaetano Bronzi, said the chair's high backrest saved her, protecting her from a beam that "could have crushed her."

Bronzi continues to ask about her boyfriend, who remains among the missing.

"They have made life plans," Gaetano Bronzi said.

Near the couples, Galassi said, was a Rome-area man, Giampaolo Matrone, whose arm was crushed by a beam. His wife, who Matrone said was nearby, remains unaccounted for.

Galassi said she risked losing hope by what she calculated was the second day in their claustrophobic pitch-black.

But Forti "was the strength of the whole group," his girlfriend said.

Corriere della Sera said Forti would hum tunes when he sensed his comrades' morale was sagging.

Galassi said they heard the first sounds from rescuers around 40 hours after the avalanche, about 11 a.m. Friday.

But it would be 4 a.m. Saturday before rescuers, who carved out a series of vertical and horizontal tunnels into the icy several-meter-thick mantle of snow to reach survivors, carried Galassi out to safety after first rescuing a mother and son and three other children.

"Surely it was a miracle, not" luck, she said.

Her mother, Isa Toccotelli, said her daughter held a rosary in her hand and never lost hope throughout the ordeal.

"It is a miracle. There are miracles. They have experienced one," Galassi's mother said.

With air pockets detected in other areas of the wreckage, rescuers held out hope for more miracles four days after the tragedy.

Impassable mountain roads have left crews without equipment such as cranes that could help them remove the piles of ice and snow more quickly. About 60 people at a time have used shovels and hands to dig, passing bucket-brigade style chunks of ice and snow they dug out.

The massiveness of the avalanche has become more apparent as experts studied the area.

Lt. Col. Vincenzo Romeo, of the Carabinieri paramilitary police's mountain weather unit, said the equivalent of the weight of "3,500 big-rigged trucks, fully loaded" had smashed into the hotel after days of heavy snowfall.

The avalanche weighed an estimated 40,000-60,000 tons when it first crushed the hotel, Romeo said. In the days since, the snow has become heavier as it has gotten icier, and now weighs an estimated 120,000 tons, he said.

The snow mass which broke off the mountainside barreled down a slope with a 35-degree angle and traveled about two kilometers (a mile) on its route straight into the resort, Romeo said.

Several powerful earthquakes had rocked the central Apennines area only hours before the avalanche. But Romeo said experts say the snow slide was triggered "not so much by earthquake, but by the accumulation of snow combined with strong winds, which created drifts."