Rescue crews yesterday raced against time looking for survivors from an earthquake that leveled three towns in central Italy, but the death toll rose to 247 and Italy once again anguished over trying to secure communities built on land prone to seismic activity.
Dawn broke over the rolling hills of central Lazio and Le Marche regions after a night of uninterrupted search efforts. Aided by sniffer dogs and audio equipment, firefighters and rescue crews using their bare hands pulled chunks of cement, rock and metal apart from mounds of rubble where homes once stood searching for signs of life.
One area of focus was the Hotel Roma in Amatrice, famous for the Amatriciana bacon and tomato pasta sauce that brings food lovers to the medieval hilltop town each August for its food festival.
Photo: Reuters
Amatrice’s mayor had initially said 70 guests were in the crumbled hotel ahead of this weekend’s festival, but rescue workers later halved that estimate after the owner said most guests escaped.
Firefighters’ spokesman Luca Cari said that one body had been pulled out of the hotel rubble just before dawn, but that the search continued there and elsewhere, even as 460 aftershocks rattled the area after the magnitude 6 temblor struck at 3:36am on Wednesday.
“We’re still in a phase that allows us to hope we’ll find people alive,” Cari said, adding that in the 2009 earthquake in nearby L’Aquila a survivor was pulled out after 72 hours.
Worst affected by the quake were the tiny towns of Amatrice and Accumoli near Rieti, 100km northeast of Rome, and Pescara del Tronto, 25km further east.
Italy’s civil protection agency reported the death toll had risen to 247 early yesterday, with at least 264 others hospitalized. Most of the dead — 190 — were in Amatrice and Accumuli and their nearby hamlets.
“From here everyone survived,” said Sister Mariana, one of three nuns who, with an elderly woman, survived the quake that pancaked half of her Amatrice convent. “They saved each other, they took their hands even while it was falling apart, and they ran, and they survived.”
She said that others from another part of the convent apparently did not make it: Three other nuns and four elderly women.
The civil protection agency set up tent cities in the affected towns to accommodate those made homeless, 1,200 of whom took advantage of the offer to spend the night, civil protection officials said.
In Amatrice, about 50 elderly and children spent the night inside a local sports facility.
“It’s not easy for them,” said civil protection volunteer Tiziano De Carolis, helping to care for about 350 people in Amatrice. “They have lost everything, the work of an entire life, like those who have a business, a shop, a pharmacy, a grocery store and from one day to another they discovered everything they had was destroyed.”
Experts estimate that 70 percent of Italy’s buildings are not built to anti-seismic standards. After every major quake, proposals are made to improve the situation, but they often languish in Italy’s thick bureaucracy and funding shortages.
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