Even before the roads were shut down, traffic into and out of Amatrice was horribly congested with emergency vehicles bringing hundreds of rescue crews up to Amatrice and dump trucks carrying tons of concrete, rocks and metal down the single-lane roads. Sister Mariana, a 32-year-old from Albania, was one of three nuns and an elderly woman who survived the quake that hit central Italy early Wednesday when she escaped a collapsing convent in Amatrice, a medieval hilltop town.
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In Sant’Angelo, northeast of Amatrice, people who lost their homes gathered at a camp, sharing their stories of loss.
Meanwhile, prime minister Matteo Renzi has pledged new money and aid to rebuild the quake-devastated region amid mounting soul-searching over why seismic-prone Italy continually fails to ensure its buildings can withstand such catastrophes.
“We want those communities to have the chance of a future and not just memories”, he told reporters in Rome on Thursday.
The ANSA report said the girl’s her older sister, who was next to her, was killed but that the girls’ parents were pulled out alive.
Giampiero Antonetti of the civil protection agency in the Abruzzo region said that teams were trying to relocate people out of the camps as the weather in the mountainous area cools.
Five Romanians, one Spaniard, one Canadian and a number of other foreigners, some of them care-givers for the elderly, were believed to be among the dead, officials said.
Worst affected by the quake were the tiny towns of Amatrice and Accumoli near Rieti, 60 miles north-east of Rome, and Pescara del Tronto, 15 miles further to the east. Mr Pirozzi told state broadcaster Rai: “I left my home and the ancient gate to the town of Amatrice, which is from 1400, wasn’t there any more”.
Italy is no stranger to deadly quakes. He also said that it was the government’s priority to aid those made homeless by the quake.
Italy’s civil defense agency has said that 267 people died and 400 were hospitalized in the quake that hit the town of Armatrice early Wednesday morning.
Rescue efforts continued through the night and into Friday, but more than a day and a half had passed since the last person was known to be extracted alive from the rubble.
Three Britons are among the dead from the initial natural disaster, including two adults who owned an apartment in the village of Sommati, just outside the badly-affected town of Amatrice.
Another investigation was opened into why Amatrice’s school had collapsed, despite the fact it had only opened in 2012 and was meant to have been earthquake-proof. Cultural Minister Dario Franceschini said all 293 culturally important sites, many of them churches, had either collapsed or been seriously damaged.
Italy sits on two fault lines, making it one of the most seismically active countries in Europe. The L’Aquila natural disaster, which struck the region of Abruzzo in 2009, killed more than 300 people.
Renzi said: “Just as the pain we feel today is strong, so, too, is the pride that belongs to a nation that is able to react in this way to a state of emergency”.
“We need to change our mentality”.
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In addition, Renzi canceled fees for residents of the affected areas and announced a new initiative, “Case Italy”, created to prevent poor construction.
