Italy earthquake death toll rises above 200
The death toll in Italy's worst earthquake for almost 30 years rose to 207 today, with 15 other people still missing and hopes fading that any more will be uncovered alive in the rubble.
The new casualty figure was delivered by the country's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, on his second visit in two days to the severely damaged medieval city of L'Aquila, the capital of the mountainous Abruzzo region, which was close to the epicentre.
"The rescue efforts will continue for another 48 hours from today until it is certain that there is no one else alive," Berlusconi said. Of about 1,500 people injured, some 100 were in serious condition.
A handful of survivors from the 6.3-magnitude quake in the early hours of yesterday morning were found alive in the wreckage today. Overnight, rescue workers freed two students and found one body buried in the remains of a university accommodation complex. Firefighters today said they had located four more students trapped in a dormitory, but did not say whether they were alive or dead.
Chief firefighter Sergio Basti said rescue crews were evacuating the area around the dormitory because they planned to begin "surgically" removing big chunks of the building in order to reach the four students. Several dozen rescue crews are at the scene of the collapsed building.
L'Aquila, which has about 70,000 residents, suffered severe damage to around two-thirds of its buildings, including several architecturally significant churches. Some villages nearby in the central Italian region were all but flattened. In one village, Onna, rescue workers found 39 of the 300inhabitants had been killed.
Thousands of emergency workers, who worked through the night under floodlights, were continuing to dig for survivors, hampered by strong aftershocks, one of which was of a 4.9 magnitude.
While firefighters said about 100 people had been rescued from rubble since the quake, they expect to find few more survivors now.
One big emergency effort is focused on the L'Aquila student building. The connected four-storey blocks were severely damaged in the quake, with one of the structures leaning at a dangerous angle.
A rescue worker was winched into the middle of the building to look for any survivors.
However, with aftershocks continuing, emergency teams were deciding whether to press on with an increasingly risky operation or pull out so the site could be demolished and made safe.
Some other buildings were already being knocked down today.
Much of L'Aquila resembled a ghost town, with only a few locals risking a return – against the advice of safety workers – to try to save some possessions .
Police said they had already arrested several people for allegedly looting.
Up to 70,000 people are currently unable to live in their homes in the region, although this may be only temporary for some. A total of 17,000 people have lost their homes completely, according to officials.
While several thousand hotel rooms have been requisitioned along the Adriatic coast, many people woke up in tents or their cars after a chilly night in which temperatures dipped to about 6C (43F).
"It has been such a hard and long day. Now that we are sitting here in our car, it's all beginning to sink in," Piera Colucci, a L'Aquila resident, told Reuters as she prepared to spend the night in her vehicle.
Berlusconi declared a state of emergency and cancelled a trip to Russia yesterday. Already facing a national economic crisis, Berlusconi has pledged about £27m in immediate aid for the area and promised that a new town will be built near L'Aquila in the next two years.
The earthquake is the worst to hit Italy since 1980, when 2,735 people were killed in a quake close to Salerno, in the south.
The disaster, which also caused widespread damage to nearby Naples, prompted the introduction of new regulations designed to strengthen buildings in the event of an earthquake.
Many of the buildings destroyed in yesterday's tremor appeared to have been built earlier, either in the 1960s and 70s or – in remote villages – during the middle ages.
There were questions yesterday about how so many buildings could have been destroyed.
Gian Michele Calvi, an earthquake expert at the University of Pavia, said Italy was in the habit of forgetting lessons.
"This country is reminded of the risk of earthquakes only when it finds itself under the rubble," he told Corriere della Sera.
"The fact that two of three operating rooms at L'Aquila hospital are no longer usable is something not worthy of a civilised country."
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