Dozens of aftershocks hit northeastern Italy overnight and yesterday morning as thousands of jittery survivors spent the night in tent camps after the region’s second killer quake in days.
Tuesday’s quake killed at least 17 people and injured 350, just nine days after a similar disaster killed six people and left thousands homeless.
Residents in cities across northern and central Italy, including Pisa and Venice, rushed into the streets in panic when the quake struck 60km east of Parma at 9am, as many were arriving for work.
Photo: AFP
Just a few hours later, already shaken residents endured a terrifying five-minute ordeal when the region was struck by three tremors of between 5.1 and over 5.3 magnitude, sparking panic and bringing down weakened buildings.
A 65-year-old woman was the last person to be pulled alive from the rubble on Tuesday night, after firemen heard her cries. She was saved by sheltering under a kitchen table as the five-story building in the town of Cavezzo collapsed.
Workers at a destroyed precision-mechanics factory near Modena where three of their colleagues died, told how they ran for their lives as the ground shook, ripping the building in two and sending masonry crashing to the ground.
Photo: EPA
“Everything happened so fast, in about seven to eight seconds. I don’t even remember. I ran out carrying the piece I was working on and I saw everything crumble,” said one worker who gave his name as Daniel.
“The quake was so violent,” he said, trembling with shock, adding that he feared being trapped in the shaking building.
As the dust began to settle in the moments following the quake, those who had made it to safety realized that three people — an Italian, as well as an Indian and a Moroccan — had been killed in the collapse.
“I’m grief-stricken, speechless. I have no tears left to shed,” Daniel added, saying he had worked with the dead men at the close-knit Meta factory in San Felice sul Panaro for years.
One victim had been living in a tent at a camp since the magnitude 6 quake on May 20 which killed six people and left about 7,000 living in makeshift dwellings, after many homes and historic buildings were reduced to rubble.
“I have to leave the building, we’re being hit by a long, powerful tremor. I have to get out,” a civil protection agency spokesman in Mantua said as one of the tremors struck.
“Everything’s collapsed, it’s chaos, buildings across the town are down,” a fireman in the tiny town of Cavezzo told Corriere della Sera newspaper.
Officials in the Emilia Romagna region said over 5,000 people had been evacuated from their homes, adding to the thousands already homeless after the May 20 quake.
The national geographics institute said yesterday the region had been hit overnight by a series of quakes and many feared the nightmare was not over.
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