And like many others around the world, you may have been unfamiliar with the town of Amatrice, ground zero for the quake. He didn’t immediately give any further details about her condition.
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“When we got out we could hear the cries of people still trapped and we helped those we could”.
About 365 people injured in Wednesday’s quake were hospitalised, the Civil Protection said, noting that about 5,000 people, including police, firefighters, soldiers and volunteers, were involved in post-quake operations.
“We were in L’Aquila when the quake struck there, and now this”.
Rescuers were reportedly using dogs to smell for survivors in the rubble and sound detectors to listen for signs of movement underneath crumbled buildings.
Residents in a central Italian region devastated by an natural disaster have been jolted awake by a strong aftershock.
Italy’s civil protection agency updated the death toll from 159 to 247 early Thursday morning.
“We will obviously move forward without interruption until we are sure there is no one left”. It seemed the bed was walking across the room by itself with us on it, ‘ said Lina Mercantini, of Cesalli, Umbria.
He added that his organization will likely follow a similar plan to raise money for the towns affected by the recent natural disaster.
“In hard times, Italy knows what to do”, he said. Somehow she avoided serious injury.
Emma Tucker, deputy editor of British newspaper The Times, was in Italy’s Marche region, about 85 kilometers from the epicenter, when her house started “trembling, shaking … an absolutely appalling noise”.
“It lasted for at least 30 seconds”.
Caffini has a house in nearby Ascoli, but said his sister-in-law was too terrified by the aftershocks to go inside it.
The university released a statement later, saying the team was headed back to Charlotte, North Carolina.
Most of the deaths come from the three towns nearest the epicenter of the quake: 184 in Amatrice, 46 in Arquata del Tronto and 11 in Accumoli. The quake was so strong that it turned several towns into rubble killing more than 160 individuals.
In the town of Amatrice, the damage was so extensive that Mayor Sergio Pirozzi said, “The town isn’t here anymore”, The Associated Press reported.
First images of damage showed debris in the street and some collapsed buildings in towns and villages that dot much of the Umbrian countryside.
Rescuers sifted through collapsed masonry in the search for survivors, but their grim mission was clouded by uncertainty about exactly how many people had been staying in communities closest to the epicentre of Wednesday’s quake.
At 5:40am on Thursday a 4.7 magnitude tremor struck near Norcia, an Umbrian town which was the epicentre of Wednesday’s natural disaster.
In May 2012, a pair of earthquakes killed dozens of people in northern Italy, while in April 2009, a magnitude-6.3 natural disaster hit the Aquila region of central Italy, killing 295.
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One rescue effort focused on the Hotel Roma in Amatrice, famous for the Amatriciana bacon and tomato pasta sauce that brings food lovers to this medieval hilltop town each August for its food festival. 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.
