73 dead in Italy’s most powerful earthquake since 2009

A powerful earthquake that struck central Italy on Wednesday has left at least 73 people dead, the country’s civil protection unit said.

Immacolata Postiglione, the head of the unit’s emergency department, announced the new toll at a press conference in Rome as rescue efforts continued in the mountain villages devastated by the quake.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) reported that the 6.2-magnitude earthquake+occurred 10 kilometres southeast of Norcia, striking at a shallow depth of only 10 km. This is a notorious seismic hotspot, and dangerous aftershocks are possible, scientists said.

Scores of buildings were reduced to dusty piles of masonry in communities close to the epicentre of the pre-dawn quake+ in a remote area straddling the regions of Umbria, Marche and Lazio.

Deaths were reported in the villages of Amatrice, Accumoli and Arquata del Tronto as residents and emergency services battled frantically to rescue people trapped beneath the ruins after the quake hit as people slept.

Just after midday, nearly nine hours after the first quake shook residents and holiday makers from their sleep in terrifying fashion, army diggers were still making their way up to a village situated at an altitude of 800 metres (2,600 feet).

A helicopter buzzed overhead while an ambulance unloaded two stretchers near a collapsed house where around a dozen firemen hacked at the rubble with spades and pick axes.

It was Italy’s most powerful earthquake since 2009, when about 300 people died in and around the city of Aquila, just to the south of the area hit on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi cancelled a planned trip to France for a meeting with European Socialist leaders and other engagements to oversee the response to the disaster.

“The situation is dramatic, there are many dead,” said Amatrice mayor Sergio Pirozzi. “Half the village has disappeared.”

Fabrizio Curcio, the head of Italy’s civil protection service, classed the quake as “severe”. The shocks were strong enough to wake residents of central Rome, some 150 kilometres away.