Miracle as three children rescued from rubble after earthquake
THREE brothers, including a seven-month-old baby, have been pulled alive from the rubble of a collapsed building on the Italian holiday island of Ischia after it was hit by a powerful earthquake.
The baby, whose name is Pasquale, was rescued by firefighters at around 4am local time while his two elder brothers, Mattias and Ciro, were pulled from the dusty wreckage a few hours later.
All were reported to be in reasonable health, given their horrendous ordeal.
“There’s no doubt now – Ciro too has been saved!” the Italian fire service tweeted, after describing the rescue of baby Pasquale as “a miracle”.
Firefighters had “worked for hours without a break to save the three children,” the fire service tweeted.
The 4.0 magnitude quake hit the island, in the Bay of Naples, at 8.57pm on Monday.
An elderly woman was killed by masonry falling from a church, while a second woman was found dead beneath the rubble of her home.
The worst hit area on the island was the village of Casamicciola, where several houses collapsed.
“There was a very loud noise, a rumble. It was like a bomb. At first, we didn’t understand that it was an earthquake,” said Simona Postiglione, a local resident.
Baby Pasquale was trapped under the rubble for more than seven hours.
Firefighters clapped and cheered as the baby was gently extracted.
The child was taken to a local hospital as a precaution, along with his mother, who was also rescued.
The powerful quake caused panic on the island, with hundreds of people running out into the streets.
“When the quake hit we all ran out into the street. It was very frightening,” an Italian holidaymaker told the Ansa news agency.
A hospital had to be evacuated after cracks appeared in its walls.
Some patients were flown by helicopter to nearby Naples.
Three ferries have been laid on to enable people to leave the island if they wish.
Ischia, which is particularly popular with German tourists, has been hit by earthquakes before. In 1883 around 2,300 people died after a quake hit Casamicciola.
Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology put the magnitude at 4.0 but both the US Geological Survey and the European quake agency EMSC estimated the magnitude at 4.3.
Civil protection squads were already on the island because of brush fires and more arrived from the mainland.
The quake hit a few days before the first anniversary of a quake that killed nearly 300 people in central Italy.