Quake levels 3 Italian towns
6.2 temblor hits vacation area; 247 die
AMATRICE, Italy — Rescue crews using bulldozers and bare hands raced to dig out survivors from an earthquake that reduced three central Italian towns to rubble Wednesday.
The death toll rose to 247 early today, about 27 hours a f te r the earthquake struck the region hosting thousands of vacationers for the final days of summer.
Residents, wakened before dawn by the temblor, emerged from their crumbled homes to find what they described as apocalyptic scenes “like Dante’s Inferno,” with entire blocks of buildings turned into piles of sand and rock, thick dust choking the air and a putrid smell of gas.
“The town isn’t here anymore,” said Sergio Pirozzi, the mayor of the hardest-hit town, Amatrice. The historic center of the town, with buildings dating from the Middle Ages, was destroyed. “I believe the toll will rise,” he said.
The magnitude-6.2 quake struck at 3:36 a.m. and was felt across a broad area of central Italy, including Rome, where residents woke to a long swaying followed by aftershocks. The temblor shook the Lazio region and Umbria and Le Marche on the Adriatic
coast, a highly seismic area that has had major quakes in the past.
Dozens of people were pulled out alive by rescue teams and volunteers that poured in from across Italy.
“She’s alive!” two women cheered as they ran up the street in Pescara del Tronto, one of the three hardest hit hamlets, after a 10-year-old girl was pulled from the rubble 17 hours after the quake struck.
And there were wails when bodies were recovered.
“Unfortunately, 90 percent we pull out are dead, but some make it, that’s why we are here,” said Christian Bianchetti, a volunteer from Rieti who was working in devastated Amatrice where floodlights were set up so the rescue could continue through the night.
Premier Matteo Renzi visited the zone Wednesday, greeted rescue teams and survivors, and pledged that “no family, no city, no hamlet will be left behind.” Italy’s civil-protection agency reported late Wednesday that in addition to the death toll, hundreds were injured.
Worst affected were the tiny towns of Amatrice and Accumoli near Rieti, some 60 miles northeast of Rome, and Pescara del Tronto, about 16 miles farther east. Italy’s civil-protection agency set up tent cities around each hamlet to accommodate the thousands of homeless.
Italy’s health minister, Beatrice Lorenzin, visiting the devastated area, said many of the victims were children: The quake zone is a popular spot for Romans with second homes, and the population swells in August when most Italians take their summer holiday before school resumes.
FESTIVAL IN TOWN
The medieval center of Amatrice was devastated, with the hardest-hit half of the city cut off by rescue crews digging by hand to get to trapped residents.
The birthplace of the spaghetti all’amatriciana pork jowl and tomato sauce, the city was full for this weekend’s planned 50th annual Spaghetti Amatriciana Festival honoring its native dish. Some 70 guests filled its top Hotel Roma, where five bodies were pulled from the rubble before the operation was suspended when conditions became too dangerous late Wednesday. Among those killed was an 11-year-old boy. The fates of the dozens of other guests weren’t immediately known.
Amatrice is made up of 69 hamlets that teams from around Italy were working to reach with search dogs, earthmovers and other heavy equipment. In the city center, rocks and metal tumbled onto the streets and dazed residents huddled in piazzas as more than 200 aftershocks jolted the region throughout the day, some as strong as magnitude 5.1.
“The whole ceiling fell but did not hit me,” marveled resident Maria Gianni. “I just managed to put a pillow on my head and I wasn’t hit, luckily, just slightly injured my leg.”
Another woman, sitting in front of her destroyed home with a blanket over her shoulders, said she didn’t know what had become of her loved ones.
“It was one of the most beautiful towns of Italy and now there’s nothing left,” she said, too distraught to give her name. “I don’t know what we’ll do.”
As the August sun turned into a nighttime chill, residents, civil protection workers and even priests dug with shovels, bulldozers and bare hands to reach survivors. A steady column of dump trucks took tons of twisted metal, rock and cement down the hill and onto the highway toward Rome, along with a handful of ambulances taking the injured to Rome hospitals.
“We need chain saws, shears to cut iron bars and jacks to remove beams. Everything, we need everything,” civil-protection worker Andrea Gentili said in the early hours of the recovery. Italy’s national blood drive association appealed for donations to Rieti’s hospital.
Despite a widespread rescue and relief effort — with army, Alpine crews, police, firefighters, Red Cross crews and volunteers, it wasn’t enough: A few miles north of Amatrice, in Illica, residents complained that rescue workers were slow to arrive and that loved ones were trapped.
“We are waiting for the military,” said resident Alessandra Cappellanti. “There is a base in Ascoli, one in Rieti, and in L’Aquila. And we have not seen a single soldier.”
Agostino Severo, a Rome resident visiting Illica, said workers eventually arrived after an hour or so. “We came out to the piazza, and it looked like Dante’s Inferno,” he said. “People crying for help, help.”
The U.S. Geological Survey reported the quake’s magnitude was 6.2, while the Italian geological service put it at 6 and the European Mediterranean Seismological Center at 6.1. The quake had a shallow depth of between 2.5 and 6 miles, the agencies said. Generally, shallow earthquakes pack a bigger punch and tend to be more damaging than deeper quakes.
The devastation harked back to the 2009 quake that killed more than 300 people in and around L’Aquila, about 55 miles south of the latest quake. The town, which still hasn’t fully recovered, sent emergency teams Wednesday to help with the rescue and set up tent camps for residents unwilling to stay indoors because of aftershocks.
“I don’t know what to say. We are living this immense tragedy,” said the Rev. Savino D’Amelio, a parish priest in Amatrice. “We are only hoping there will be the least number of victims possible and that we all have the courage to move on.”
POPE SADDENED
Another hard-hit town was Pescara del Tronto, in the Le Marche region, where the main road was covered in debris.
Residents were digging their neighbors out by hand before emergency crews arrived. Aerial photos taken by regional firefighters showed the town essentially flattened and under a thick gray coat of dust; Italy requested European Union satellite images of the whole area to get the scope of the damage.
“When I arrived at the break of day, I saw a destroyed village, screams, death,” Bishop Giovanni D’Ercole of Ascoli Piceno, who visited the hamlet, told Vatican Radio. He said he had blessed “the bodies of two children buried under the rubble.”
The mayor of Accumoli, Stefano Petrucci, said a family of four had died there, one of the few young families that had decided to stay in the area. He wept as he noted that the tiny hamlet of 700 swells to 2,000 in the summer months, and that he feared for the future of the town.
“I hope they don’t forget us,” he told Sky TG24.
Renzi, the prime minister, speaking from Rieti, a city in Lazio near the epicenter, likened the affected communities to “a family that has been hit but won’t stop.” He vowed that the government would start to rebuild quickly, noting widespread anger over the long delays in rebuilding after the 2009 quake.
“Reconstruction is what will allow this community to live and to restart,” he said.
Expressions of solidarity and offers of help poured in from France, Germany, Israel and other countries, as well as from the European Commission.
President Barack Obama, speaking by telephone to Italian President Sergio Mattarella, said the U.S. sent its thoughts and prayers to the quake victims and saluted the “quick action” by first responders, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.
Pope Francis skipped his traditional catechism for his Wednesday general audience and instead invited the thousands of pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square to recite the rosary with him. He also sent a sixman squad from the Vatican’s fire department to help with the rescue.
“I cannot fail to express my heartfelt sorrow and spiritual closeness to all those present in the zones afflicted,” he said in remarks released by the Vatican. “I also express my condolences to those who have lost loved ones, and my spiritual support to those who are anxious and afraid. Hearing the mayor of Amatrice say that the town no longer exists, and learning that there are children among the dead, I am deeply saddened.”
The mayor of Accumoli, Stefano Petrucci, said a family of four had died there, one of the few young families that had decided to stay in the area. He wept as he noted that the tiny hamlet of 700 swells to 2,000 in the summer months, and that he feared for the future of the town.