The magnitude 6 quake struck just after 3:30 a.m. and was felt across a broad section of central Italy, including the capital Rome where people in homes in the historic center felt a long swaying followed by aftershocks.
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A post office is engulfed by rubbles in Arcuata del Tronto, central Italy, where a 6.1 quake struck just after 3:30 a.m., Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2016. In Amatrice, some 50 elderly and children spent the night inside a local sports facility.
Fabio Curcio, head of Italy’s Civil Protection Department, called it a “serious earthquake” that resulted in “wounded” and “serious damage”, ANSA reported. “So we want to continue”.
Amid scenes of carnage, dozens of emergency services staff and volunteers were determined to attempt to pluck more survivors from the ruins.
“Unfortunately, 90 per cent we pull out are dead, but some make it, that’s why we are here.”
“We didn’t see any happy stories here”, she said.
Saletta is less than a mile from the epicenter of the deadly 6.2-magnitude natural disaster, and an eerie quiet has now taken hold of the village.
“It was one of the most lovely towns of Italy and now there’s nothing left”, she said, too distraught to give her name. In fact, CNN’s Barbie Nadeau and her crew narrowly escaped as a home collapsed behind her in Saletta. “They have given us a handsome example, because their pain did not take away their dignity”.
Italian officials have said that they do not believe the country will need to invoke the EU’s Civil Protection Mechanism to call on fellow member states for support and help after more than 240 people died when a powerful natural disaster struck the area around Amatrice in central Italy.
Some 264 of the wounded have been hospitalized.
Officials said the death toll seemed destined to rise further.
Rescue workers try to save the girl in Pescara del Tronto.
In April 2009, a 6.3-magnitude quake near the town of L’Aquila killed at least 295, injured over 1,000 and left at least 55,000 homeless.
The quake, which was felt across much of central Italy, including in Rome and Florence, flattened nearly all of the small towns of Amatrice and Accumoli and caused extensive damage to a raft of others.
After the L’Aquila quake, the Civil Protection agency made nearly a billion euros available for upgrading buildings in seismically-vulnerable areas.
The two quakes had much in common, said Massimo Cocco, a geologist with the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Rome.
Many homes in the three hardest-hit central Italian towns, even if they remain standing, have been declared uninhabitable by rescue crews.
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Many persons are still believed trapped beneath building debris.
