Fabrizio Curcio, the director of Italy’s Civil Protection Department, activated national emergency procedures in light of the natural disaster.
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Residents and rescue crews continued their search for survivors on Thursday, digging through the rubble and sending sniffer dogs to hard-to-reach areas.
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Italian prosecutors have opened an investigation into building collapses in the Lazio towns of Accumoli and Amatrice following Wednesday’s natural disaster.
The towns at the epicenter of the quake, Amatrice, Accumoli and Arquata del Tronto, are scenes of devastation.
Italian Red Cross spokesman Tommaso Della Longa said: “People are in shock, they have seen their houses collapse around them and they have lost everything”.
“Half the village has disappeared”, said Amatrice mayor Sergio Pirozzi, surveying a town center that looked as if had been subjected to a bombing raid. “Help us”, he said.
USA citizen Michael Gilroy was with his girlfriend on the second floor of a three-story hotel in the town of Montepulciano when the quake hit.
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. There have been reports of tremors as many as 105 miles from the epicentre, as far as in Rome.
A red alert was issued by the USGS PAGER system, which estimated that significant casualties and property damage were likely as a result of the natural disaster.
A rescuer works following an natural disaster in Amatrice, central Italy on August 24, 2016.
How many people were killed?
Several aftershocks have occurred since the initial quake.
Little is now known about the nationalities of those caught up in the quake, but Romania’s foreign ministry says that five Romanians have died and 11 are missing, while Spain’s foreign ministry says at least one Spaniard has died.
Weather will not hamper recovery efforts in the next several days. There have been more than 460 aftershocks.
It was packed with visitors when the quake struck at 3:36am (0136 GMT). The 6.8 magnitude quake killed at least four, according to the AP. The quake damaged pagodas in Bagan, the country’s capital.
The powerful quake hit 10 km southeast of Norcia at 3.36 a.m., on Wednesday.
It made some damaged buildings in Amatrice tremble dangerously, and more ruins collapsed where rescuers were at work.
This tweet from Italy’s fire and rescue service shows an aerial view of the devastation in one of the hardest-hit areas.
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Rescue crews are facing a race against time to dig out survivors from an natural disaster that reduced three central Italian towns to rubble.
