Italian quale Rescuers Say boy Saved brother

Family of five rejoices after three boys survive

MILAN — An Italian family of five was “reborn” after all three children buried in the rubble of their home by a 4.0-magnitude quake were pulled to safety Tuesday in a painstaking 16hour rescue operation on the Mediterranean resort island of Ischia.

The Toscano family’s happy ending brought cheers from the dozens of firefighters who worked through the night to extricate the two boys and their infant brother, trapped alone for hours after their father was rescued and their pregnant mother managed to free herself from their collapsed apartment in the town of Casamicciola.

“I don’t know how to define it if not a miracle,” the boys’ grandmother, Erasma De Simone, said at a hospital. “We were all dead, and we are reborn.”

Though relatively minor in magnitude, the quake Monday killed two, injured another 39 and displaced some 2,600 people in Casamicciola and the neighboring town of Lacco Ameno on the northern end of the island.

The damage in Ischia focused attention on two recurring themes in quake-prone Italy: seismically outdated old buildings and illegal new construction with shoddy materials. One woman was killed by falling masonry from a church that had damage in a quake centered in Casamicciola in 1883 which killed more than 2,000.

Rescuers hailed the courage of the older boys, who spent 14 and 16 hours respectively waiting to be freed, talking with firefighters all the while, eventually receiving water and a flashlight. One official credited the older boy, Ciro, 11, with helping save his brother, Mattias, 8, by pushing him out of harm’s way under a bed.

The boys’ grandmother described Ciro as shaken by the ordeal. While Mattias was scared, he also “was sorry because he lost the money in his piggy bank, and lost his toys,” she told the ANSA news agency.