Aftershocks rattle Italian quake zone; toll rises to 250
|
| Rescuers make their way through destroyed houses following Wednesday's earthquake in Pescara Del Tronto, Italy, Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016. Rescue crews raced against time Thursday looking for survivors from the earthquake that leveled three towns in central Italy, but the death toll rose to 247 and Italy once again anguished over trying to secure its medieval communities built on seismic lands. |
PESCARA DEL
TRONTO, Italy (AP) -- As the search for survivors ground on,
Premier Matteo Renzi pledged new money and measures Thursday to rebuild
quake-devastated central Italy amid mounting soul-searching over why the
seismic-prone country has continually failed to ensure its buildings
can withstand such catastrophes.
A day after
the deadly quake killed 250 people, a 4.3 magnitude aftershock sent up
plumes of thick gray dust in the hard-hit town of Amatrice. The
aftershock crumbled already cracked buildings, rattled residents and
closed already clogged roads.
It was only one of the more than 470 temblors that have followed Wednesday's pre-dawn quake.
Firefighters
and rescue crews using sniffer dogs worked in teams around the hard-hit
areas in central Italy, pulling chunks of cement, rock and metal from
mounds of rubble where homes once stood. Rescuers refused to say when
their work would shift from saving lives to recovering bodies, noting
that one person was pulled alive from the rubble 72 hours after the 2009
quake in the nearby town of L'Aquila.
"We
will work relentlessly until the last person is found, and make sure no
one is trapped," said Lorenzo
Botti, a rescue team spokesman.
Worst
affected by the quake were the tiny towns of Amatrice and Accumoli near
Rieti, 100 kilometers (60 miles) northeast of Rome, and Pescara del
Tronto, 25 kilometers (15 miles) further to the east.
Many
were left homeless by the scale of the destruction, their homes and
apartments declared uninhabitable. Some survivors, escorted by
firefighters were allowed to go back inside homes briefly Thursday to
get essential necessities for what will surely be an extended absence.
"Last
night we slept in the car. Tonight, I don't know," said Nello Caffini
as he carried his sister-in-law's belongings on his head after being
allowed to go quickly into her home in Pescara del Tronto.
Caffini has a house in nearby Ascoli, but said his sister-in-law was too terrified by the aftershocks to go inside it.
"When she is more tranquil, we will go to Ascoli," he said.
Charitable
assistance began pouring into the earthquake zone in traffic-clogging
droves Thursday. Church groups from a variety of Christian
denominations, along with farmers offering donated peaches, pumpkins and
plums, sent vans along the one-way road into Amatrice that was already
packed with emergency vehicles and trucks carrying sniffer dogs.
Other assistance was spiritual.
"When
we learned that the hardest hit place was here, we spoke to our bishop
and he encouraged us to come here to comfort the families of the
victims," said a priest who gave his name only as Father Marco as he
walked through Pescara del Tronto. "They have given us a beautiful
example, because their pain did not take away their dignity."
Italy's
civil protection agency said the death toll had risen to 250 by
Thursday afternoon, with more than 180 of the fatalities in Amatrice. At
least 365 others were hospitalized, and 215 people were pulled from the
rubble alive since the quake struck. A Spaniard and five Romanians were
among the dead, according to their governments.
There
was no clear estimate of how many people might still be missing, since
the rustic area was packed with summer vacationers. The Romanian
government alone said 11 of its citizens were missing.
As the search effort continued, the soul-searching began.
Premier
Renzi authorized a preliminary 50 million euros in emergency funding
and the government cancelled taxes for residents, pro-forma measures
that are just the start of what will be a long and costly rebuilding
campaign. He announced a new initiative, "Italian Homes," to answer
years of criticism over shoddy construction across the country, which
has the highest seismic hazard in Western Europe.
But he also said that it was "absurd" to think that Italy could build completely quake-proof buildings.
"It's
illusory to think you can control everything," he told a news
conference. "It's difficult to imagine it could
have been avoided simply
using different building technology. We're talking about medieval-era
towns."
Those old towns do not have to conform
to the country's anti-seismic building codes. Making matters worse,
those codes often aren't applied even when new buildings are built.
Armando
Zambrano, the head of Italy's National Council of Engineers, said the
technology exists to reinforce old buildings and prevent such high death
tolls when quakes strike every few years. While he estimated that it
would cost up to 93 billion euros ($105 billion) to reinforce all of the
historic structures across the country, he said targeted efforts in the
riskiest areas could be done for less.
"We
are able to prevent all these deaths. The problem is actually doing it,"
he told The Associated Press.
"These tragedies keep happening because
we don't intervene. After each tragedy we say we will act but then the
weeks go by and nothing happens."
Some experts
estimate that 70 percent of Italy's buildings aren't built to
anti-seismic standards, though not all are in high-risk areas.
Funding
shortfalls and bureaucracy are obstacles to making the country's
buildings quake-resistant. A new law tries to encourage homeowners to
make their homes earthquake-proof by reimbursing 65 percent of the cost
over 10 years, but it isn't enough to push Italians, who are facing
years of economic stagnation, to put up the cash to make the upgrades.
Compounding
the problem, many of the oldest and most vulnerable structures are in
remote villages inhabited mostly by retired Italians getting by on
pensions with no cash to spare. In the cities, upgrades are stifled by
the condominium-style rules of buildings requiring the agreement of
multiple owners for such investments.
"We're
among the best in the world in managing emergencies," Renzi said,
praising the men and women, many of them volunteers, who jump into
action when crises hit. "But it's not enough to be in the vanguard in
emergencies."
Geologists surveyed the damage
Thursday to determine which buildings were still inhabitable, while
Culture Ministry teams were fanning out to assess the damage to some of
the region's cultural treasures, especially its medieval-era churches.
Italian
news reports said prosecutors investigating the quake were looking in
particular into the collapse of Amatrice's "Romolo Capranica" school,
which was restored in 2012 using funds set aside after the last major
quake in 2009.
In recent Italian quakes, some
modern buildings - many of them public institutions - have been the
deadliest. Those included the university dormitory that collapsed in the
2009 L'Aquila quake, killing 11 students, and the elementary school
that crumbled in San Giuliano di Puglia in 2002, killing 27 children -
the town's entire first-grade class - while surrounding buildings
survived unscathed.
Major quakes in Italy are
often followed by criminal charges being filed against architects,
builders and officials responsible for public works. In the case of the
L'Aquila quake, prosecutors also put six geologists on trial for
allegedly failing to adequately warn residents about the temblor. Their
convictions were overturned on appeal.
In Pescara del Tronto, rescue crews were looking Thursday for three people believed crushed in a hard-to-reach area.
"The
dogs from our dog rescue unit make us think there could be something,"
said Danilo Dionisi, a spokesman for the firefighters.
Emergency
services set up tent cities around the quake-devastated towns to
accommodate the homeless, housing about 1,200 people overnight. In
Amatrice, 50 elderly people and children spent the night inside a local
sports facility.
"It's not easy for them,"
said civil protection volunteer Tiziano De Carolis, who was helping to
care for the homeless 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."
