In Albania, crews race to save lives on ground that continues to shake
DURRES, Albania — With each piece of rubble pulled off the twisted pile of steel and concrete that used to be a four-story home, Luca Martino and his rescue dog, Foglia, were called into action.
“If there is room for air to come to the outside, the dog can smell it,” Mr. Martino, a rescue worker from Italy, said during a break on Thursday. “If someone is alive, Foglia will bark.”
On this day, the dog had not barked.
It was slow, arduous work, repeated at numerous sites in Albania in the aftermath of a 6.4-magnitude earthquake that struck on Tuesday, leaving at least 47 people dead. And in this Adriatic coast city, where many buildings were leveled and many more were dangerously damaged, the rescuers knew that hopes were fading.
“There is still time,” Mr. Martino said. Nine members of the Lala family had been in the home when it collapsed. Four had died, one had already been rescued, but four remained beneath the rubble.
But as precious minutes ticked by, the work came to a sudden halt. The earth was shaking again. The site needed to be cleared. Across the city, people poured out of their homes and businesses — again.
Officially, this time it was a 5.1-magnitude quake, but in a city where nerves are already frayed and poorly constructed buildings pose a threat even when the earth is not moving, the number hardly mattered. The helpless feeling was the same.
Later that day, the rescuers working with Mr. Martino pulled one more body out of the wreckage, leaving three still missing beneath the rubble.
At the city’s main hospital, engineers urgently looked over structural blueprints and rushed visitors out of the administration headquarters, saying it was not safe. When the earth shook around noon, people in the emergency room briefly fled to wait out the shaking.
Jadranka Mihaljevic, head of engineering at the seismology department of Montenegro’s Institute for Hydrometeorology and Seismology, said the magnitude of the aftershocks was not unexpected.
“This is a big earthquake, and it’s not surprising, at least not in our region,” she said.
Driving through the city, which was founded in the seventh century B.C. but where many buildings were hastily thrown up during the country’s wild and often lawless transition to democracy in the 1990s, felt like touring an urban battlefield.
The buildings bore deep cracks and homes were flattened. On corner after corner, red-and-white tape marked a place that was deemed unsafe to walk or stay.
The official death toll climbed as the authorities slowly shifted from rescue operations to recovery efforts. Officials said 680 people had sought medical attention, including 35 who remained hospitalized, and one who was airlifted to Italy.