There were no immediate reports of damage early Wednesday, but state-run RAI radio said people ran into the streets in central Umbria and Le Marche regions shortly after the quake struck just after 3:30 a.m.
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The European Mediterranean Seismological Center put the magnitude at 6.1 and said the epicenter was northeast of Rome, near Rieti.
The main quake, centered a shallow 5.5 miles below ground, struck at 3:36 a.m. local time and about 10 miles from the town of Norcia in Umbria, a central Italian province known for its rolling hills of olive plantations and vineyards.
It was felt in central Rome, as people in homes in the city’s historic center felt a long swaying. Rescue workers were preparing to take to the air in helicopters to assess the damage at dawn. “The town is no more”, Amatrice Mayor Sergio Pirozzi told CNN affiliate Rai of the village, home to some 2,000 people.
Rescue workers have been targeting their efforts in the town by calling the cellphones of missing residents, and trying to reach those who answer.
One hotel that collapsed in the small town of Amatrice probably had about 70 guests, and only seven bodies had so far been recovered, said the mayor of the town that was one of the worst hit by the quake.
The picturesque medieval town of about 3,000 residents – best known as the home of “pasta all’amatriciana” – is remote and was cut off after a bridge connecting the town and the rest of the region was damaged in the quake.
The newspaper said Italian authorities said the quake was comparable in intensity to a 2009 natural disaster in the Abruzzo region of central Italy that killed more than 300 people.
Residents were digging their neighbors out by hand before emergency crews arrived.
“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”.
One rescue was particularly delicate as a ranger in Capodacqua, in the Marche province of Ascoli Piceno, diplomatically tried to keep an 80-year-old woman calm as she begged to get to a toilet, even though she was trapped in the rubble.
Officials say the death toll is expected to rise.
“The whole ceiling fell but did not hit me”, said Amatrice resident Maria Gianni. “Now I move away a little bit and you do pee, please”.
While the number of people trapped under the rubble is unknown, rescuers are focusing on finding survivors, said Fabrizio Curcio, head of Italy’s civil protection.
“What struck me the most of all was a group of teenagers just like me calling their friends and seeing if they are still alive, breaking down in tears on the floor after they heard that their friend had died”. I think if this had happened during winter we would be looking at way less casualties.
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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.
