The Hindu : Front Page : Temblor in Italy kills 90-plus

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Apr 07, 2009
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Front Page

Front Page

Temblor in Italy kills 90-plus

Vaiju Naravane

Thousands of people lose homes in historic, quake-prone region at the epicentre

The earthquake had a magnitude of 6.3
Italy is a highly earthquake vulnerable region

— PHOTO:AP

LONG HAUL: Firefighters pick through the debris on Monday in L’Aquila where a trail of destruction was in evidence.

Paris: At least 92 people died when a powerful earthquake struck the historic central Italian town of L’Aquila, in the mountainous Abruzzo region at 3-32 a.m. on Monday. Measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale, it made several thousand people homeless. It destroyed ancient buildings and monuments, some of them jewels of Renaissance and Baroque architecture dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries.

Scores were still feared buried under the rubble and the toll is expected to rise. Rescue teams worked through the night to free survivors trapped under the debris. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi cancelled a trip to Moscow and declared a state of emergency.

Scenes of great distress were reported by the local media. Roofs caved in on sleeping inhabitants and boulders fell off mountain slopes blocking roads. At least five children were among the dead in L’Aquila, according to the police, quoted by ANSA news agency.

Epicentre

The quake had a magnitude of 6.3, according to the Italian geophysical institute. The epicentre was just outside L’Aquila and heavy damage was inflicted up to a distance of 30 km in all directions, emergency services told AFP.

Sirens blared across L’Aquila as rescue workers with dogs raced to find people in the rubble. Thousands of the 60,000 residents fled into the streets as more than a dozen aftershocks rattled the town.

The region of Abruzzo is part of Italy’s quake-prone central and southern region. A powerful earthquake in the area claimed 13 lives in 1997 and damaged or destroyed priceless cultural heritage.

Rare, but not surprising

Gilles Mazet-Roux, geophysicist in the Euro Mediterranean Seismologic Centre, said that “a quake measuring 6.3 on the scale is a rare but not surprising event.” Italy, he explained, lies at the heart of the shock between the African and Eurasian tectonic plates. But the local context is also worsened by several “sub plates” like the ones in Italy, the Aegean Sea, in Turkey or the Balkans.

“With such a massive quake occurring in the middle of the night it was inevitable there would be deaths,” he said, adding that Italy was equipped to deal with prevention education.

“The new constructions have all been built in order to withstand seismic shocks and the country has one of the best seismological institutions in the world”, Mr. Mazet-Roux said.

Italy is criss-crossed by two fault lines, making it one of Europe’s most vulnerable regions, with some 20 million people at risk.

An October 2002 quake killed 30 people including 27 pupils and their teacher who were crushed under their schoolhouse in the tiny medieval village of San Giuliano di Puglia. On November 23, 1980, a violent quake struck the southern region of Irpiona near Naples, killing 2,570, injuring 8,850 and displacing 30,000.

Belief

Major southern cities like Messina or Palermo were largely destroyed by massive temblors that claimed over 60,000 lives each time and severely damaged their historic centres.

Italians believe a really major earthquake strikes once every century and huge quakes have been recorded in 1693 and 1783 while Europe’s most devastating quake to date occurred in 1908 in Messina, southern Italy with an estimated 200,000 dead.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Front Page