‘LIKE DANTE’S INFERNO’
Quake devastates Italian village
They were beautiful medieval towns in the Italian hilltops and now they are gone, reduced to rubble early Wednesday by a powerful earthquake that hit while people were asleep.
Survivors of the magnitude-6.2 temblor said they could scarcely believe their eyes as they stumbled from their beds.
“We came out to the piazza, and it looked like Dante’s Inferno,” said Agostino Severo, a Rome resident who was visiting Illica, near the epicentre of the quake, which was followed by hundreds of aftershocks.
“People crying for help, help. Rescue workers arrived after one hour ... one and a half hours.”
Added a woman from Amatrice: “It was apocalyptic.”
“It was very, very violent and absolutely terrifying. I don’t even know how to describe the sound. I managed to get out of my house but my pharmacy is destroyed,” said Mauro Massimiliano, 49.
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.”
What was once the thriving main street of Amatrice in the middle of the Apennine Mountains looked like it had been hit by a sustained artillery attack.
By Wednesday night, the number of killed by the quake was believed to be at least 159, with 368 injured, but the totals could rise.
“Three quarters of the town is not there anymore,” said Sergio Pirozzi, Amatrice’s mayor. “The aim now is to save as many lives as possible. There are voices under the rubble, we have to save the people there.”
Seven years after a huge earthquake devastated nearby L’Aquila, killing about 300 people, the same fate has befallen Amatrice and surrounding villages in a remote area that straddles the central regions of Umbria, Lazio and Marche.
A frantic search effort was underway, with rescue workers using dogs to try to detect signs of life. One resident spoke of hearing nothing but the sound of cats meowing underneath the rubble.
Pope Francis interrupted his weekly audience in St. Peter’s Square to express his condolences. “To hear the mayor of Amatrice say his village no longer exists and knowing that there are children among the victims, is very upsetting for me,” he said.
The Vatican sent a sixman team from its tiny fire service to the quake zone to help with the search and rescue.
In response to the disaster, Italy mobilized a massive rescue effort. Convoys of army trucks, bulldozers, ambulances and flatbed trucks wound their way through the mountains, their task made harder by the narrow roads.
The quake was so strong that it was felt 140 kilometres away in Rome as well as Rimini on the Adriatic coast and as far south as Naples. A nationwide appeal was launched for people to donate blood to help the injured.
A sign at the entrance to Amatrice proclaims it “Uno dei borghi piu belli d’Italia” (one of Italy’s most beautiful villages.)
Sadly, that is no longer true.
A massive stone lintel had fallen from the wall of an ancient church and stored in the hood of a car like a giant spear.
Other vehicles, crushed beneath chunks of masonry the size of table tops, lay covered in a fine white dust. Houses had been shorn in half. In the parts still standing, furniture, shelves of food and chandeliers were exposed to view.
Timber beams poked vertically into the sky from piles of rubble, and huge slabs of wall lay at weird angles. In what had been one of the town’s piazzas, rescue workers from a specialized caving unit of Italy’s alpine rescue service dug away at a vast pile of rubble with their hands.
Carried on stretchers, victims were wrapped in the blankets and bedspreads in which they had been sleeping when the quake hit.
“There are many people still under the rubble,” said a police officer. “It’s very dangerous work digging into the wreckage — especially if there are more aftershocks.”
One of the worst-hit buildings was the convent and church of the Most Holy Crucifix. The three-storey building folded in on itself, its historic bell tower crashing to the ground.
“I was sleeping but suddenly heard this strange noise. I woke up and saw that everything was destroyed,” said Marianna, 35, a nun who was helping to look after the elderly people staying in the convent on a summer retreat.
She sustained a deep gash to her forehead and her hair was matted with blood and dust. She was rescued by a young man who hauled her out of the wreckage.
They then heard more cries for help — two other nuns were trapped in the debris. This time it was a pair of forest rangers who came to the rescue.
“They performed a very heroic act, they risked their lives. I’m sure God will reward them,” Marianna said.
In another case, one ranger had to persuade an 80-year-old woman trapped under the debris of her home to go ahead and urinate where she was since they couldn’t get her out anytime soon.
The woman was later taken to hospital, but her 47-year-old daughter who lived with her did not survive.
Later in the day, police allowed a middle-aged couple through a cordon to see what had become of their family home.
They came back five minutes later, the woman sobbing on her husband’s shoulder. “It’s totally collapsed, there’s nothing left,” he said.