Photos taken from the air by regional firefighters showed the town essentially flattened; Italy requested European Union satellite images of the whole area to get the scope of the damage.
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Five persons were confirmed dead and a child to be missing in the nearby town of Amatrice, which was destroyed by the quake.
Surrounded by rubble in the village of Arquata di Tronto, 65-year-old Altiero Cinaglia sounded fatalistic about bringing Japanese-style safety standards to creaking Italy. People still trapped under the rubble, screaming for help, dead children being carried away by policemen and it was just really surreal.
The magnitude 6 quake struck at 3:36am and was felt across a broad swath of central Italy, including Rome, where residents felt a long swaying followed by aftershocks.
A large, damaging 6.2 magnitude quake struck central Italy Wednesday morning.
Emma Tucker, the deputy editor of The Times of London, was one of the thousands of people on vacation in the region struck by the natural disaster. “Now the biggest challenge is to reach all of them”, Red Cross spokesman Tommaso della Longa told the affiliate.
The army was mobilised to help with special heavy equipment and the treasury released 235 million euros ($265 million) of emergency funds.
“Half the town is gone”, RAI quoted him as saying, according to Reuters.
Mayor Stefano Petrucci told state-run RaiNews24 that there was also another victim in the town, which is close to the epicenter of Italy’s 6.1 magnitude quake.
“We’re digging, digging… hoping to find someone alive”, he told the affiliate.
At least 10 persons died in and around Arquata del Tronto where the main access road was damaged, complicating rescue operations.
“Are you able to breathe a bit?” asks the rescuer. Jerzy Zaba of the Silesian University in Katowice, in southern Poland, said Wednesday that a wedge-shaped front of the African Plate is pressing into the Eurasian Plate in the Adriatic Sea region and pushes into the neighboring regions, like Italy’s Apennine Mountains.
“I spoke to a few people, they were still in shock”.
Some homes collapsed on residents as they slept. Rescue dogs inspected the rubble, to no avail.
The quake comes ahead of Amatrice’s “Festival of the Spaghetti all’Amatriciana” this weekend, on August 27 and 28.
A strong quake brought down buildings in mountainous central Italy early on Wednesday, trapping residents and sending others fleeing into the streets.
At least ten people are dead and many more are reportedly trapped under rubble after a powerful quake brought buildings crashing down and made one city “almost disappear” in central Italy. He said he planned to visit the affected area Wednesday afternoon.
“In hard times, Italy knows what to do”. “Everything, we need everything”. Italy’s national blood drive association appealed for donations to Rieti’s hospital.
Italy is no stranger to deadly quakes.
Pope Francis has skipped his catechism lesson during his Wednesday general audience and instead led pilgrims in praying the rosary for the victims of Italy’s quake.
Emma Tucker, deputy editor of British newspaper The Times, was in Italy’s Marche region, about 85 kilometers from the epicenter.
L’Aquila Mayor Massimo Cialente said 250 temporary homes built after the 2009 natural disaster were available for the newly displaced.
“It was a pretty solid, scary quake”. She also survived but lost her husband. But after the third powerful aftershock she chose to run outside to the street, alongside stunned neighbors.
“It was very shocking”, she said.
“It was pretty terrifying”, she said.
Previously, reports and officials had said at least 23 were dead. “The entire hotel was shaking”.
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Jessica Turner of the USGS said aftershocks could be expected, perhaps for several days. One, around an hour later, was recorded as magnitude 5.5 by the US Geological Survey. More than 100 are missing and believed to be trapped under the debris.
