L’AQUILA, Italy: A powerful earthquake struck central Italy early yesterday, killing at least 150 people, making up to 100,000 homeless and flattening entire medieval towns while residents slept.
As rescue workers combed through the rubble for survivors and rushed to set up tents for the homeless before night fell, officials warned the death toll could still rise substantially and declined to estimate the number of missing.
Most of the dead were in L’Aquila, a 13th century mountain city about 100 km east of Rome, and surrounding towns and villages in the Abruzzo region. The mayor of L’Aquila said the 6.3 magnitude quake made some 100,000 people homeless.
“Some towns in the area have been virtually destroyed in their entirety,” said Gianfranco Fini, speaker of the lower house of Parliament, as MPs observed a moment of silence.
Hospital sources cited by the domestic ANSA news agency said the quake killed at least 150 people and injured some 1,500.
“I woke up hearing what sounded like a bomb,” said L’Aquila resident Angela Palumbo, 87. “We managed to escape with things falling all around us. Everything was shaking, furniture falling. I don’t remember ever seeing anything like this in my life.”
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi canceled a trip to Moscow and declared a national emergency, freeing up funds for aid and rebuilding. But he also appeared on the defensive about reports that officials shrugged off a warning about the quake weeks ago.
The government insisted that the warning by seismologist Giacchino Giuliani before yesterday’s earthquake had no scientific foundation. First tremors in the region were felt in mid-January and continued at regular intervals, triggering mounting alarm in the city. Vans with loudspeakers drove around the town a month ago telling locals to evacuate their houses after Giuliani, from the National Institute of Astrophysics, predicted a large quake was on the way, prompting the mayor’s anger.
Giuliani, who based his forecast on concentrations of radon gas around seismically active areas, was reported to police for “spreading alarm” and was forced to remove his findings from the Internet.
Flying into the disaster zone, Berlusconi told reporters that now was the time to concentrate on relief efforts and “we can discuss afterward about the predictability of earthquakes.”
Rubble was strewn throughout L’Aquila, a city of 68,000, and nearby towns, blocking roads and hampering rescue teams. Old women wailed as residents helped firefighters and rescue workers tear through the rubble. Older houses and buildings made of stone, particularly in outlying villages that have not seen much restoration, collapsed like straw houses.
Hospitals appealed for help from doctors and nurses throughout Italy. The smell of gas filled parts of the mountain towns and villages, pouring out of ruptured mains.
A resident standing by an apartment block that was reduced to the height of an adult said: “This building was four stories high.” In another part of the city, residents tried to hush the wailing of grieving relatives to try to pinpoint the sound of a crying baby.
The sprawling third-century Baths of Caracalla in Rome were damaged, Angelo Bottini, an archaeological official, said. Initial inspection revealed that the baths “suffered some damage” but the full extent of the damage would be known only after a detailed inspection, he said.
