A large, damaging 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck central Italy at 3:36 a.m. local time Wednesday morning (9:36 p.m. EDT Tuesday night), killing at least 159 people, many while they slept. The death toll is expected to rise as countless others are missing in the debris.
Italian
Premier Matteo Renzi spoke Wednesday evening in the provincial capital
of Rieti after visiting rescue crews and survivors in the hard-hit town
of Amatrice and flying over other demolished towns in the nearby Le
Marche region, the Associated Press reports. Renzi said 34 people died
in Le Marche, the rest from the other towns. At least 368 others were
injured.
A rescue official told AP that around 10 p.m.
workers were forced to suspend their search at Hotel Roma in Amatrice,
which was badly damaged during the quake. Officials say about 70 people
were staying at the hotel when quake struck and so far five bodies have
been pulled from the rubble.
One of the people killed in the rubble of the hotel was an 11-year-old boy who had initially given signs of life.
Much of the heart of Amatrice, a town of about 2,700 in the province of Rieti, Central Italy, had been reduced to rubble.
"The town isn't here anymore," Amatrice Mayor Sergio Pirozzi said.Crews used bulldozers and their bare hands to dig out survivors, who wept in the streets as priests blessed the bodies of the victims pulled from the destruction. One woman was pulled out of a collapsed building alive with her dog, the Associated Press reports.
"It was
one of the most beautiful towns of Italy and now there's nothing left," a
woman in Amatrice told the Associated Press. "I don't know what we'll
do."
A few kilometers to the north in
Illica, the response was slower as residents anxiously waited for loved
ones to be extracted from the rubble.
"We
came out to the piazza, and it looked like Dante's Inferno," said
Agostino Severo, a visiting resident of Rome. "People crying for help,
help. Rescue workers arrived after one hour ... one and a half hours."
The mayor of Accumoli, Stefano Petrucci, described the situation was “even more dreadful than we feared, with buildings collapsed, people trapped under the rubble and no sound of life,” according to The Guardian.
Meanwhile,
dozens had been rescued alive from the rubble in the devastated town of
Pescara del Tronto, to the north in the Marche region of central Italy.
Italian news agencies had reported several deaths in the town.Among the victims was an 18-month-old girl whose mother survived the deadly earthquake of 2009 in L'Aquila and moved away after the traumatic experience. The toddler, Marisol Piermarini, was sleeping in her bed in the family's vacation home in Arquata del Tronto when the quake struck. Her mother is being treated in a hospital after being rescued from the rubble.
An 8-year-old girl was rescued from the debris in Pescara del Tronto Wednesday. At nightfall, two women ran up the street yelling "She's alive!"
Chief firefighter Danilo Dionesei confirmed the girl was freed from the rubble and taken to a nearby hospital, but no further details have been released about her condition.
According to CNN, many of the affected settlements can only reached by small roads, which poses a challenge for authorities to bring heavy machinery to the disaster sites.
President
Barack Obama called Italian President Sergio Mattarella Wednesday to
offer US assistance, CNN also reports. The president has Woffered his thoughts and prayers to the people of Italy and "saluted quick action of first responders."
The tremor occurred at a depth of 6.2 miles,
according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The quake's epicenter was 4.1
miles west-northwest of Accumoli, Italy, and a little more than 100
miles northeast of Rome. More than 30 aftershocks have been reported
since the initial quake, seven of which were greater than 4 magnitude.
"Quakes
with this magnitude at this depth in our territory in general create
building collapses, which can result in deaths," said the head of
Italy's civil protection service, Fabrizio Curcio.
Pescara del tronto#terremoto
This is the largest earthquake to hit Italy since a 6.3 magnitude tremor hit the L'Aquila region on April 6, 2009. That earthquake was responsible for more than 300 deaths, according to Scientific American.
This is a developing story; please check back frequently for more information.
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