So devastating! A 6.2-magnitude quake struck Italy on August 23, and left at least 63 people dead, four towns in shambles, and survivors buried alive – including kids who reportedly can be heard screaming beneath the destruction. “Italy is the same thing”, Jones said on ABC’s “Good Morning America”.
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Residents responding to wails muffled by tonnes of bricks and mortar sifted through the rubble with their bare hands before emergency services arrived with earth-moving equipment and sniffer dogs.
Sergio Perozzi, mayor of Amatrice, a remote town in northern Lazio devastated by the quake, told state-run RAI radio that buildings had collapsed and lights had gone out across the town centre. We have called in people to help remove the rubble.
With residents advised not to go back into their homes, temporary campsites were being established in Amatrice and Accumoli as authorities looked to find emergency accommodation for more than 2,000 people. Approx 495 rescue workers are hard at work in the day, assured the Italian Interior Ministry.
Numerous dead were in Pescara del Tronto, a popular holiday spot where up to ten people were missing.
Shaking is more intense from quakes that hit close to the surface like setting off “a bomb directly under a city”, said Susan Hough, a USGS seismologist.
A spokeswoman for the civil protection department, Immacolata Postiglione, said the dead were in Amatrice, Accumoli and other villages including Pescara del Tronto and Arquata del Tronto.
“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.
“There will also be a lot of these older buildings, that have collapsed into rubble, whereas in Christchurch, we didn’t have a lot of people killed in a lot of different buildings around the city”.
“Quakes of this magnitude at this depth in our territory in general create building collapses, which can result in deaths”, said the agency’s head Fabrizio Curcio.
“Now that daylight has come, we see that the situation is even more awful than we feared”, the mayor of Accumoli, Stefano Petrucci, said.
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.
“I hope they don’t forget us”, he told Sky TG24. “One was a friend of mine”, he said.
A 1997 quake killed a dozen people in central Italy and severely damaged one of the jewels of Umbria, the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi, filled with Giotto frescoes.
Italian Premier Matteo Renzi says the death toll from the quake that hit central Italy has risen to 120.
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Officials said six people were known to have died in Accumoli and a further six were reported dead in Amatrice. It’s truly a devastation with rescue efforts ongoing.
