Sergio Perozzi, the mayor of Amatrice, said, “Roads in and out of town are cut off”.
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“We will leave nobody on their own”, Renzi pledged earlier in the day as he thanked people – including many who had searched for survivors with their bare hands – for aiding the rescue effort.
A Reuters reporter said the town’s hospital had been badly damaged by the quake, with patients moved into the streets. Darkness hampered immediate damage assessments, but officials told Italy’s state broadcaster, RAI, that at least six people had died, including a family with two children in the central Italian town of Accumoli.
Mario Audino, acting executive director with the Caboto Centre, Manitoba’s Italian-Canadian centre, said he was watching TV last night when the program was interrupted by a news report about the 6.2 magnitude quake. “This is one of the most seismically active parts of Italy as clearly identified in many seismic hazard maps”.
In 2009, an quake also hit central Italy, killing over 300 people.
Premier Matteo Renzi’s office tweeted that heavy equipment was on its way. Pirozzi issued alarming assessments of debris so bad that streets could not be cleared to reach stranded residents.
ONE News Europe correspondent Emma Keeling reports from Amatrice, which was levelled by a 6.2 magnitude quake.
“Aftershock rate is high in #Italy following M6.2 and will likely continue in the coming days”, the center said in a tweet Wednesday.
“I could feel the ground shake and my three dogs started to go a little insane, running around and barking”, Maurizio Serra, 56, told USA TODAY.
Tremors were felt as far north as Bologna and as far south as Naples.
Accumoli Mayor Stefano Petrucci told ANSA that all homes in the city are uninhabitable and that a tent city for the “entire population” would have to be set up.
Since the area hit by the quake is very popular with tourists at this time of year, relatives in Malta are being asked to conact the numbers below to report any relatives travelling to the region and who have not contacted home since the natural disaster. Jerzy Zaba of the Silesian University in Katowice, in southern Poland, said Wednesday that a wedge-shaped front of the African Plate is pressing into the Eurasian Plate in the Adriatic Sea region and pushes into the neighboring regions, like Italy’s Apennine Mountains.
Zaba told Polish PAP agency that the African Plate is moving northwards at the speed of up to 2 inches a year. The 6.0 magnitude natural disaster hit the city of Rieti at 3:32 a.m. Wednesday (0132 GMT), with a shallow depth of 4.2 km, according to the National Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.
The quake struck shortly after 3.30am local time, and was followed by several aftershocks.
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Stanglin reported from McLean, Va.; Contributing: Charles Ventura from Los Angeles, Steph Solis and Jessica Durando from McLean.
