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[EwanM]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this:

Italian rescuers work into night
Floodlights are aiding rescuers sifting rubble for signs of life after the devastating Italian earthquake, while thousands face a night in shelters.

At least 150 people are dead, dozens missing, 1,500 injured and some 50,000 homeless after the pre-dawn quake struck L'Aquila and its region.

Emergency crews have reportedly pulled 60 people alive from the rubble.

Survivors are being housed in hotels or a tent city which has been erected in the medieval hill city.

A BBC correspondent in L'Aquila says there was a strong aftershock in the city around 2200GMT, which lasted for around two seconds and made the ground feel like jelly.

It was the strongest in a number of tremors felt throughout the day.

Many houses in L'Aquila have been reduced to piles of rubble, dotted with crushed cars.

In one area of L'Aquila, rescuers tried to hush wails of grief as they pinpointed the screams of people trapped beneath debris, a Reuters correspondent reports.

In the village of Onna, population 350, the quake killed at least 24 people.

"There's a lot of people dead, there's a lot of people dead," said villager Valentina Brunetto.

"They're young people, young people dead under the house."

Weather breaks

The clear, sunny day which dawned amid the dust of shattered centuries-old buildings has given way to a night of rain, hampering the rescuers.

Brick dust turned to a white sludge but still exhausted emergency workers pulled away bricks and broken pieces of wood with their bare hands, lessening the risk of further casualties that the use of cranes and diggers might pose.

At least 5,000 rescue workers are in the region and hospitals, Reuters reports, have appealed for help from doctors and nurses throughout Italy.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has said the country has the resources to handle the disaster.

As dozens of after-shocks rattled the region, many survivors were being bussed to hotels on the Adriatic coast, where up to 10,000 places have been made available.

The state of emergency in place means that more resources can be brought in to give the region what it needs, the BBC's Duncan Kennedy reports from L'Aquila.

"We're hoping they give us a tent or something to sleep under tonight," Isenia Santilli, 70, told AFP news agency as she took shelter at a L'Aquila sports field where the Red Cross was feeding survivors.

Francesco Rocha, commissioner of the Italian Red Cross, put the number of homeless at about 50,000.

First priority for the agency, he told the BBC, was to save the lives of people still under the collapsed buildings.

"Second, is to organise the lives of the homeless. We are arranging field kitchens, beds and other items to organise their lives for the next days."

Shattered heritage

Between 3,000 and 10,000 buildings are thought to have been damaged in L'Aquila, making the 13th Century city of 70,000 uninhabitable for some time.

L'AQUILA

•Medieval city, founded in the 13th Century
•Capital of the mountainous Abruzzo region
•Population 70,000, with many thousands more tourists and foreign students
•Walled city with narrow streets, lined by Baroque and Renaissance buildings

Parts of many of the ancient churches and castles in and around the city have collapsed.

L'Aquila is considered one of Italy's architectural treasures.

"The damage is more serious than we can imagine," Giuseppe Proietti, a culture ministry official in Rome, told the Associated Press.

"The historic centre of L'Aquila has been devastated."

Correspondents note that the very age of many of the country's buildings makes them particularly vulnerable to earthquake damage.

Italy lies on two fault lines and has been hit by powerful earthquakes in the past, mainly in the south of the country.

Much of the centre of L'Aquila had to be rebuilt after an earthquake in 1703.


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Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/w ... 986727.stm

Published: 2009/04/06 22:54:20 GMT

Such a shame

[racechick]

Been watching it on tele. Very sad.

[Rivelution]

Wow thats sad. That must be terrible seeing your home in rubble and your loved ones underneath. They will be in my prayers.

[McLaren Fan]

Terrible story. In Italy, many people live in apartments, so when earthquakes strike, the death toll is going to be quite high.

[Tim]

Heard it on the radio this morning, it sounded like it was pretty bad, hope the death toll stays low but looks like it won't

[texasmr2]

Read about it in the paper today, very sad and my prayers are with them.

[bud]

thats terrible news. not only for the loss of life but also for the heritage lost

[darwin dali]

and it's not over: aftershock in Italy

[EwanM]

and it's not over: aftershock in Italy

Indeed

Aftershocks hamper Italian rescue
Fresh aftershocks have rattled earthquake-hit central Italy, killing at least one more person and hampering the search for survivors.

The latest tremor struck at 0627 local time (0427 GMT) in L'Aquila, epicentre of Monday's 6.2-magnitude quake.

The aftershocks brought down masonry from already damaged buildings and one tremor was felt as far away as Rome.

As the desperate search for survivors continues, officials have raised the death toll from the quake to 250.

Another 100 people are reported to be in a serious condition and some 20,000 people were made homeless.

In other developments:

“ We have no money, no documents - we have nothing ”
Woman in tent camp

•The first of the funerals for the victims of the earthquake is being held on Wednesday and is taking place outside L'Aquila for safety reasons
•The Vatican says Pope Benedict XVI is planning to visit the area soon after Easter Sunday
•The Civil Protection agency says 11 recovered bodies have yet to be identified, and that 15 people remain missing.
'Camping weekend'

The BBC's Dominic Hughes in L'Aquila said that, once again, rescue teams worked through the night in an effort to find any survivors under the rubble of the city's shattered buildings.

Dominic Hughes reports from L'Aquila
We had a very strong aftershock last night. It was very frightening.

It was a very strange experience - a deep, deep elemental rumbling in the ground, and then masonry started to fall all around us, so everyone ran away from the buildings.

The ground really started to move beneath your feet. It was like a wave was passing beneath your feet and it lasted for 10 or 15 seconds.

But the emphasis of the rescue operation will slowly shift to salvage and clearance, our correspondent says.

As overnight temperatures dropped to 4-5C, thousands spent a second night in tent camps around L'Aquila, the capital of the central Abruzzo region.

Marco Dolponi from Italy's Civil Protection Agency, said it could be a fortnight before people were given alternative accommodation.

"We are trying to get them to the hotels on the seaside, for example. But the time to let them come back to the home is difficult to say."

He added that tremors were continuing and it was difficult to know when they would end.

At least seven strong shocks hit the region during the night, waking people from their sleep in the tent shelters.

"It was very frightening," said Costanza, a Romanian woman at a camp on the outskirts of L'Aquila.

"We have no money, no documents - we have nothing. I just can't wait to get home."

But Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi appeared to brush aside the dire conditions facing survivors during a visit to one of the camps.

"They have everything they need, they have medical care, hot food...," he said in an interview with a German television station.

"Of course, their current lodgings are a bit temporary. But they should see it like a weekend of camping."

Rescue to continue

Rescue efforts were given a boost overnight, when a 20-year-old woman was pulled alive from the rubble after being buried for 42 hours.

Earlier on Tuesday, searchers pulled 98-year-old Maria D'Antuono unharmed from her collapsed home in L'Aquila. She told Italy's Ansa news agency that she had kept at her crochet while awaiting rescue.

Mr Berlusconi said earlier the operation would continue through Thursday until rescuers were certain that no living person remains under the rubble.

He said some 7,000 police, soldiers and other emergency service personnel and volunteers are taking part in the operation.

"We're a bit tired," Fabrizio Curcio, director of the civil protection emergency bureau told AFP.

"But frankly, fatigue is not a major concern... We're running on adrenaline. There's still a long road ahead of us."

Between 3,000 and 10,000 buildings are thought to have been damaged in L'Aquila, making the 13th-Century city of 70,000 uninhabitable for some time.

About 150 people have been pulled alive from the rubble.

The head of the Italian Red Cross, Francesco Rocha, said 20,000 people were homeless and it could be months or even years before they were all back in their own homes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/europe/7989112.stm

[Lordblackstuff]

What a fool that Berlisconi is then eh ?

[AKR]

In Italy most of the new buildings are designed to handle earthquakes but not the old ones. Had the same quake happened in a country like Turkey or China, the death toll would be over 100,000. The problem with a city like L'Aquila is that it has a lot of medievil buildings and these wont withstand any quake at the magnitude of 6.3 on the Richter Scale. Also that quake was directly under the city (the epicentre) and it lasted 30 seconds at least. Although a tragedy, it is still amazing the death toll is only about 300. In Melbourne about a month and bit ago there was an earthquake measuring 4.9 on the Richter Scale and 2 weeks later another of 4.3 followed. Amazingly no damaged reported anywhere. But this is why. The original quake's epicentre was reported 90 kms away and so would of weakened by the time it hit the city and it's suburbs and 2 it only lasted about 5 seconds. But I know I felt it and had it lasted longer and the epicentre closer damage would of been immenent. Just proves nowhere on Earth is really safe from earthquakes as the whole planet is seismic. It is just some places are not as bad as others.