Britons dead in Italian quake disaster

Questions over construction methods after €1bn fund failed to ensure modern buildings were safe

Three British citizens, including a 14-year-old boy, were reportedly among those killed in the Italian earthquake. An official from Amatrice, one of the worst affected towns, confirmed the deaths last night. At least 250 people were killed when the quake levelled three towns on Wednesday.

THREE Britons, including a 14-yearold schoolboy, were reportedly among those killed in the Italian earthquake.

The teenager, believed to be from London, was staying in an apartment in Amatrice with his parents and sister when the disaster struck. His mother and father are said to be seriously injured after Wednesday morning’s quake which killed at least 250 people.

They are believed to have been taken to different hospitals by rescue teams, but had been reunited yesterday.

Relations of the British family, who have not been identified, have flown to Italy to comfort them, The Mirror re- ported. It has emerged that rescue workers took the mother, who suffered fractured facial bones, to Rieti Hospital while her husband, who had a broken leg, was taken to a hospital in the city of L’Aquila 40 miles away.

Their daughter survived and did not need hospital treatment.

“British Embassy staff are in the region providing consular support, and we have deployed additional staff to support this effort,” said Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary.

Italian authorities yesterday opened an investigation into the collapse of buildings in the country’s earthquakedevastated region, as questions were asked about why more lessons had not been learned from the previous deadly tremor seven years ago.

The death toll from the magnitude 6.2 quake, which struck a mountainous area of central Italy early on Wednesday, was expected to rise further as firemen, soldiers and alpine rescuers dug through the rubble of towns and villages. More than 260 people were injured, some critically.

The Italian inquiry will focus on the modern buildings that collapsed, rather than the medieval stone structures.

Investigators will look in particular at a badly damaged school in the town of Amatrice, where 184 people died. The Romolo Capranica school was built in 2012 – three years after an earth- quake in the nearby city of L’Aquila killed 300 people – and was supposed to be quake-proof. “The school did not collapse, but was damaged,” said Nicola Zingaretti, the governor of Lazio, one of the three regions affected.

Giuseppe Saieva, the chief public prosecutor for most of the area affected, said he would be opening an investigation into whether anyone should be held responsible. His investigation will look at the school in Amatrice, as well as a recently restored bell tower which collapsed in the village of Accumoli.

After the L’Aquila disaster, Italy’s Civil Protection agency made almost €1 billion (£0.85 billion) available for upgrading buildings in areas vulnera- ble to earthquakes. But few applications for the grants were received, a failing which critics blamed on red tape and overly complicated forms. “Here in the middle of a seismic zone, nothing has ever been done,” said Dario Nanni, from the Italian Council of Architects. “It does not cost that much more when renovating a building to make it comply with earthquake standards. But less than 20 per cent of buildings do.”

He said the earthquake’s impact had been made worse by the widespread use of cement beams rather than timber beams in the construction of houses: “These indestructible beams hit walls like a hammer and that is what made so many [houses] collapse.”