Dozens dead in Italy earthquake
Rescuers race to dig out survivors after hundreds hurt in 6.2 magnitude shocker
ASTRONG earthquake in central Italy reduced three towns to rubble as people slept early yesterday, with reports that as many as 50 people were killed and hundreds injured.
The toll was likely to rise as as rescue crews racing to dig out survivors reached homes in more remote hamlets where the scenes were apocalyptic “like Dante’s Inferno”, according to one witness.
“The town isn’t here anymore,” said Sergio Pirozzi, the mayor of Amatrice. “I believe the toll will rise.” The magnitude 6.2 quake struck at 3.36am and was felt across a broad swathe of central Italy, including Rome, where residents felt a long swaying followed by aftershocks. The quake shook the Lazio region as well as Umbria and Le Marche on the Adriatic coast.
Premier Matteo Renzi was to visit the zone and promised: “No family, no city, no hamlet will be left behind.”
The hardest-hit towns were Amatrice and Accumoli near Rieti, 100km northeast of Rome, and Pescara del Tronto 25km further east. Italy’s civil protection agency said several hundred had been injured and thousands were in need of temporary housing.
The Ansa news agency said 35 of the dead were in Amatrice alone, with another 17 dead in the province of Ascoli Piceno, which includes Pescara del Tronto, for a reported total topping 50.
The centre of Amatrice was devastated, with 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 on to the streets of the city centre 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,” resident Maria Gianni said. “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 daylight dawned, residents, civil protection workers and even priests began digging with shovels, bulldozers and their bare hands, trying to reach survivors.
There was relief as a woman was pulled out alive from one building, followed by a dog.
“We need chainsaws, shears to cut iron bars, and jacks to remove beams: everything, we need everything,” civil protection worker Andrea Gentili told AP.
Italy’s national blood drive association appealed for donations.
A few kilometres 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.
“People were 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 90km south of the latest quake.
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.