Aftershocks continue as death toll goes up
ITALY | PESCARA DEL TRONTO — As the search for survivors ground on, Premier Matteo Renzi pledged new money and measures Thursday to rebuild quake-devastated central Italy amid mounting soul-searching over why the seismic-prone country continually has failed to ensure its buildings can withstand such catastrophes.
A day after the deadly quake killed at least 250 people, a 4.3 magnitude aftershock sent up plumes of thick gray dust in the hard-hit town of Amatrice. The aftershock crumbled already cracked buildings, rattled residents and closed already clogged roads.
It was only one of the more than 470 temblors that have followed Wednesday’s pre-dawn quake.
‘Until the last person’
Firefighters and rescue crews using sniffer dogs worked in teams around the hard-hit areas in central Italy, pulling chunks of cement, rock and metal from mounds of rubble. Rescuers refused to say when their work would shift from saving lives to recovering bodies, noting that one person was pulled alive from the rubble 72 hours after the 2009 quake in the nearby town of L’Aquila.
“We will work relentlessly until the last person is found, and make sure no one is trapped,” said Lorenzo Botti, a rescue team spokesman.
Many were left homeless by the scale of the destruction, their homes and apartments declared uninhabitable.
Old and shaky
Medieval-era towns do not have to conform to the country’s anti-seismic building codes. Making matters worse, those codes often aren’t applied even when new buildings are built.
Some experts estimate that 70 percent of Italy’s buildings aren’t built to anti-seismic standards, though not all are in highrisk areas.
Funding shortfalls and bureaucracy are obstacles to making the country’s buildings quakeresistant. A new law tries to encourage homeowners to make their homes earthquake-proof by reimbursing 65 percent of the cost over 10 years, but it isn’t enough to push Italians, who are facing years of economic stagnation, to put up the cash to make the upgrades.
Italy’s civil protection agency said the death toll had risen to 250 by Thursday afternoon, with more than 180 of the fatalities in Amatrice.
At least 365 others were hospitalized, and 215 people were pulled from the rubble alive since the quake struck.