HUNDREDS FEARED DEAD IN ITALIAN QUAKE
AN EARTHQUAKE is feared to have killed hundreds of people yesterday after flattening towns and villages across central Italy.
Rescue teams were last night desperately battling to free survivors trapped under piles of rubble after the “apocalyptic” quake struck as victims slept.
Harrowing accounts revealed the full horror of the disaster which killed at least 120 people – wiping out entire families.
At least another 150 people are reported missing and the death toll is expected to rise significantly.
One survivor Agostino Severo said: “We came out to the piazza, and it looked like Dante’s Inferno. People crying for help, help. Rescue workers arrived after one hour, one and a half hours.”
The 6.2 magnitude quake hit in the early hours around 85 miles north-east of Rome, laying waste to parts of Umbria where thousands of British tourists are spending their summer holidays.
Rubble
It was so powerful that buildings were rocked in the centre of Rome. It was followed by an aftershock with a radius of more than 150 miles with tremors reaching Britain.
The historic community of Amatrice, which has a population of 2,000, was near the epicentre.
Amatrice Mayor Sergio Pirozzi said: “The town is no more. I have an appeal to make – we have access roads to the town cut off and people under the rubble. Help us.
“There are voices under the rubble, we have to save the people.”
Locals responding to muffled wails beneath tons of bricks and mortar tore at the rubble with their bare hands before emergency services arrived with earth-moving equipment and sniffer dogs.
The local hospital was badly damaged and patients were moved into the streets. The town’s 13thcentury clock tower remained standing amongst the debris – with its hands frozen at 3.36am.
At least six medieval towns and villages were also razed to the ground.
In nearby Accumoli a family of four, including two boys aged eight months and nine, were buried when their house collapsed.
As the rescue workers carried away the body of the infant wrapped in a blanket the children’s grandmother blamed God saying: “He took them all at once.”
Two brothers, aged four and seven, were pulled from the rubble nearby after hiding under a bed with their grandmother as the building fell down.
Around 100 people were still unaccounted for in the village of Arquata del Tronto where a baby girl was also found dead after being pulled from a family home. It is thought the infant’s parents were taken to hospital.
Rescue bids were hampered because bridges collapsed and roads were torn up or buried in landslides in the wake of the earthquake. The army was mobilised to transport special heavy equipment. At the Vatican Pope Francis postponed his regular weekly general audience to pray for the victims. Eve Read, from London, was holidaying with her family 20 miles away from the epicentre – which left her separated from her children.
She said: “We were all woken just after 3.30am our time this morning with severe sideways shaking that felt like the bed but was obviously the house.”
The family were later reunited.