Five Croatians killed by earthquake
BELGRADE: A powerful earthquake struck Croatia early yesterday, causing at least five deaths and dozens of injuries as rescuers scrambled to find two people reportedly buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings.
A girl was killed by falling rubble in Petrinja, about 65km west of Zagreb and right on top of the epicentre of the magnitude6.0 quake.
Four others — a young man, an elderly man and a father with his son — were killed in the area of Glina, the town Deputy Mayor Branka Baksic Mitic confirmed.
An aftershock almost as powerful as the main quake hit shortly afterwards, along with many lesser tremors. It was unclear whether any of the victims were killed in the latter quake.
Petrinja and the nearby Sisak were hit the hardest. ‘‘Most of the buildings are unusable,’’ Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said after arriving in Petrinja. In Sisak, the roof on the town hospital collapsed.
‘‘This is terrible, there are casualties, there are injured. We saw a child killed on the town square,’’ the mayor of Petrinja, Darinko Dumbovic, said.
The quake could be felt in the surrounding countries. It finished off many buildings already damaged by two tremors, of magnitude 5.2 and 5.0, on Tuesday.
Dumbovic said seven engineers had been pulled out alive after being buried under the rubble of a building they were assessing for damage from the previous day.
Rubble could also be seen on the streets in Zagreb. Most of the capital was without electricity, and the national power company HEP said that its grid had sustained wide and severe damage and urged consumers to minimise the use of power.
Krsko, the western nuclear power plant that Croatia shares with Slovenia, said it had shut down out of precaution, pending damage assessment.
The Interior Ministry urged people residing in buildings that showed signs of damage to leave immediately.
A 5.3magnitude quake on March 22 inflicted heavy damage on Zagreb, including its Catholic cathedral, which has been under reconstruction since the 1980s. A tip of one of its twin towers fell immediately.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted that she spoke to Plenkovic on the phone and promised the bloc’s support.
❛ In Sisak, the roof on the town hospital
collapsed