Fire service spokesman Luca Cari said one body had been pulled out of the hotel rubble just before dawn but the search was continuing there and elsewhere, even as 460 aftershocks rattled the area after the magnitude 6 quake struck at 3.36am on Wednesday. However, he later died, along with at least four others staying at the hotel.
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Pescara del Tronto was one of the hardest-hit towns, along with Accumoli and Amatrice.
INGV reported 60 aftershocks in the four hours following the initial quake, the strongest measuring 5.5. ‘I just managed to put a pillow on my head and I wasn’t hit luckily, just slightly injured my leg’. ‘I don’t know what we’ll do’.
” ‘It was one of the most lovely towns of Italy and now there’s nothing left, ‘ she said, too distraught to give her name”.
The forestry police joined Italian carabinieri, firefighters, civil protection crews, Red Cross workers, army and Alpine troops in the rescue effort in towns hit by the. “We haven’t stopped digging all day”, said Marcello di Marco, a farmer who came from Narni around 100 km away to assist with the rescue efforts in Pescara del Tronto.
The natural disaster, which registered between 6.0 and 6.2, was strong enough to be felt in Bologna to the north and Naples to the south, each more than 220 km from the epicenter.
Asked if there were any dead he said: “Look there are houses that aren’t here anymore”.
With 368 people injured and an unknown number trapped under rubble, the number of dead and injured was expected to rise in the wake of the pre-dawn quake, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi warned.
The U.S. Geological Survey put the magnitude at 6.2 with an epicenter about 10 kilometers southeast of the town of Norcia.
David Rothery, Professor of Planetary Geosciences at Britain s Open University, said the shallow depth of Wednesday s quake had made it more destructive.
The emergency services released an aerial photograph showing whole areas of the town of Amatrice flattened, while debris filled the streets of nearby Accumoli. At least 2,000 among the displaced are summer vacationers, he said.
“No, eh?” she called out as two rescue workers appeared.
“That frankly is a testament to the expertise of the Italians in responding to situations like this, but if our friends in Italy need our help, particularly in dealing with a situation like this, you can rest assured that we’re going to provide it”, he told reporters.
Mayor Stefano Petrucci told state-run RaiNews24 that there was also another victim in the town, which is close to the epicenter of Italy’s 6.1 magnitude quake.
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. The Franciscan friars who are the custodians of the basilica reported no immediate damage from Wednesday’s tumblor.
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Earlier on Wednesday, the pope cancelled a scheduled speech at his weekly general audience on religious teachings and instead prayed with the crowd for victims and survivors.
