Death toll rises to at least 120 in Italy earthquake
Rescuers search among damaged buildings in Arquata del Tronto after a strong earthquake hit central Italy on August 24, 2016 (AFP Photo)A powerful earthquake that struck central Italy on Wednesday has left at least 120 people dead, the country\’s civil protection unit said.
Immacolata Postiglione, the head of the unit\’s emergency department, announced the new toll at a press conference in Rome as rescue efforts continued in the mountain villages devastated by the quake.
The toll was likely to rise as crews reached homes in more remote hamlets where the scenes were apocalyptic "like Dante\’s Inferno," according to one witness. Complicating matters was that the area is a popular vacation spot in summer, with populations swelling, making the number of people in the area at the time difficult to estimate.
"The town isn\’t here anymore," said Sergio Pirozzi, the mayor of Amatrice. "I believe the toll will rise."
The magnitude 6 quake struck at 3:36 a.m. (0136 GMT) and was felt across a broad swath of central Italy, including Rome, where residents woke to a long swaying followed by aftershocks. The temblor shook the Lazio region and Umbria and Le Marche on the Adriatic coast.
Premier Matteo Renzi planned to head to the zone later Wednesday and promised the area, which has suffered quakes many times before: "No family, no city, no hamlet will be left behind."
The hardest-hit towns were the tiny towns of Amatrice and Accumoli near Rieti, some 100 kilometers (80 miles) northeast of Rome, and Pescara del Tronto some 25 kilometers further east. Italy\’s civil protection agency, which was coordinating the rescue, said the provisional toll was 73 dead, several hundred injured and thousands in need of temporary housing, though it stressed the numbers were fluid.
The center of Amatrice was devastated, with entire blocks of buildings razed and the air thick with dust and smelling strongly of gas. Amatrice, birthplace of the famed spaghetti all\’amatriciana bacon-tomato pasta sauce, is made up of 69 hamlets that rescue teams were working to reach.
Rocks and metal tumbled onto the streets of the city center and dazed residents huddled in piazzas as more than 40 aftershocks jolted the region into the early morning hours, some as strong as 5.1.
"The whole ceiling fell but did not hit me," marveled resident Maria Gianni. "I just managed to put a pillow on my head and I wasn\’t hit luckily, just slightly injured my leg."
Another woman, sitting in front of her destroyed home with a blanket over her shoulders, said she didn\’t know what had become of her loved ones.
"It was one of the most beautiful towns of Italy and now there\’s nothing left," she said, too distraught to give her name. "I don\’t know what we\’ll do."
As the August sun bared down, residents, civil protection workers and even priests dug with shovels, bulldozers and their bare hands to reach survivors. Dozens were pulled out alive: There was relief as a woman emerged on a stretcher from one building, followed by a dog.
"We need chain saws, shears to cut iron bars, and jacks to remove beams: everything, we need everything," civil protection worker Andrea Gentili told The Associated Press. Italy\’s national blood drive association appealed for donations to Rieti\’s hospital.
But just a few kilometers to the north, in Illica, the response was slower as residents anxiously waited for loved ones to be extracted from the rubble.
"We came out to the piazza, and it looked like Dante\’s Inferno," said Agostino Severo, a Rome resident visiting Illica. "People crying for help, help. Rescue workers arrived after one hour… one and a half hours."
The devastation harked back to the 2009 quake that killed more than 300 people in and around L\’Aquila, about 90 kilometers (55 miles) south of the latest quake. The town, which still hasn\’t bounced back fully, sent emergency teams Wednesday to help with the rescue.
"I don\’t know what to say. We are living this immense tragedy," said a tearful Rev. Savino D\’Amelio, a parish priest in Amatrice. "We are only hoping there will be the least number of victims possible and that we all have the courage to move on."
Another hard-hit town was Pescara del Tronto, in the Le Marche region, where the main road was covered in debris.
Residents were digging their neighbors out by hand since emergency crews hadn\’t yet arrived in force. Photos taken from the air by regional firefighters showed the town essentially flattened; Italy requested EU satellite images of the whole area to get the scope of the damage.
"There are broken liquor bottles all over the place," lamented Gino Petrucci, owner of a bar in nearby Arquata Del Tronto where he was beginning the long cleanup.
One rescue was particularly delicate as a ranger in Capodacqua, in the Marche province of Ascoli Piceno, diplomatically tried to keep an 80-year-old woman calm as she begged to get to a toilet, even though she was trapped in the rubble.
"Listen, I know it\’s not nice to say but if you need to pee you just do it," he said. "Now I move away a little bit and you do pee please."
The Italian geological service put the magnitude at 6.0; the U.S. Geological Survey reported 6.2 with the epicenter at Norcia, about 170 kilometers (105 miles) northeast of Rome, and with a relatively shallow depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles).
"Quakes with this magnitude at this depth in our territory in general create building collapses, which can result in deaths," said the head of Italy\’s civil protection service, Fabrizio Curcio. He added that the region is popular with tourists escaping the heat of Rome, with more residents than at other times of the year, and that a single building collapse could raise the toll significantly.
The mayor of Accumoli, Stefano Petrucci, said a family of four had died there, one of the few young families who had decided to stay in the area. He wept as he noted that the tiny hamlet of 700 swells to 2,000 in the summer months, and that he feared for the future of the town.
"I hope they don\’t forget us," he told Sky TG24.
In Amatrice, the Rev. Fabio Gammarota, priest of a nearby parish, said he had blessed seven bodies extracted so far. "One was a friend of mine," he said.
A 1997 quake killed a dozen people in central Italy and severely damaged one of the jewels of Umbria, the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, filled with Giotto frescoes. The Franciscan friars who are the custodians of the basilica reported no immediate damage from Wednesday\’s temblor.
Pope Francis skipped his traditional catechism for his Wednesday general audience and instead invited pilgrims in St. Peter\’s Square to recite the rosary with him.
Here is a list of major earthquakes in Italy since the start of the 20th century:
– Dec 28, 1908 – More than 82,000 people are killed in a 7.2 magnitude earthquake which reduces Sicily\’s second largest city Messina to rubble and damages the city of Reggio Calabria across the straits on the mainland.
– Jan 13, 1915 – Some 32,600 are killed when an earthquake measuring 7.0 strikes Avezzano in central Italy.
– July 27, 1930 – A quake measuring 6.5 strikes the region of Irpinia in southern Italy, killing around 1,400 people.
– May 6, 1976 – An earthquake measuring 6.5 rocks Friuli in Italy\’s northeastern corner, killing 976 people and leaving 70,000 others homeless.
– Nov. 23, 1980 – Some 2,735 people are killed and more than 7,500 injured in an earthquake measuring 6.5. The epicenter was at Eboli but damage was reported over a huge area toward Naples.
– Dec. 13, 1990 – Earthquake centred in the sea off Sicily kills 13 people and injures 200.
– Sept. 26, 1997 – Two earthquakes measuring 6.4 kill 11 people and cause serious damage to the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi, damaging priceless Medieval frescoes.
– July 17, 2001 – Earthquake measuring 5.2 shakes the northern Italian region of Alto Adige, killing one woman.
– Oct. 31, 2002 – An earthquake measuring 5.9 hits Campobasso, south-central Italy, killing 30 people, most of them children, in San Giuliano di Puglia.
– April 6, 2009 – A powerful earthquake strikes the Abruzzo area east of Rome. It kills more than 300 people and devastates the 13th century city of L\’Aquila.
– May 29, 2012 – More than 16 people are killed and 350 injured in the second big earthquake to hit the area around Modena in northern Italy. An earlier quake nine days earlier killed nearly 10 people.
SOURCE: REUTERS, AFP, AP
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