15 dead in latest killer quake in northern Italy

A man looks at a col­lapsed farm in Cam­posanto, north­ern Italy, Tues­day. A mag­ni­tude 5.8 earth­quake struck the same area of north­ern Italy stricken by another fatal tremor on May 20. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Luca Bruno)

COLLEEN BARRY

Asso­ci­ated Press

MIRANDOLA, Italy — A pow­er­ful earth­quake killed at least 15 peo­ple and left 200 injured Tues­day as it rocked a swath of north­ern Italy. Fac­to­ries, ware­houses and churches col­lapsed, deal­ing a sec­ond blow to a region where thou­sands are still home­less from another tem­blor just nine days ago.

The 5.8 mag­ni­tude quake left 14,000 peo­ple home­less in the Emilia Romagna region north of Bologna, one of Italy’s most agri­cul­tur­ally and indus­tri­ally pro­duc­tive areas.

It was felt from Pied­mont in north­west­ern Italy to Venice in the north­east and as far north as Aus­tria. Dozens of after­shocks hit the area, some reg­is­ter­ing more than 5.0 in magnitude.

The tem­blor ter­ri­fied many of the thou­sands who have been liv­ing in tents or cars since the May 20 quake and cre­ated a whole new wave of homeless.

“I was shav­ing and I ran out very fast, half dressed,” a res­i­dent of Sant’Agostino, one of the towns dev­as­tated in the quake ear­lier this month, told AP Tele­vi­sion News.

Tuesday’s quake struck just after 9:00 a.m. with an epi­cen­ter 40 kilo­me­ters (25 miles) north­west of Bologna, accord­ing to the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey — just a hand­ful of (miles) kilo­me­ters away from where the 6.0-magnitude quake that killed seven peo­ple on May 20 was centered.

Gov­ern­ment under­sec­re­tary Anto­nio Catri­cala, brief­ing the Sen­ate in Rome, said at least 15 peo­ple were killed, some 200 injured and seven peo­ple miss­ing. The num­ber of home­less swelled by sev­eral thou­sand, to a total of 14,000, he said.

While Tuesday’s quake was about 100 times less intense than the one May 20, its death toll was more than twice as high. In both, the dead included work­ers killed by col­laps­ing fac­to­ries and warehouses.

In the town of Miran­dola, near the epi­cen­ter, the church of San Fran­cis crum­bled, leav­ing only its facade stand­ing. The main cathe­dral also collapsed.

Sant’Agostino’s town hall, so dam­aged in the May 20 quake that it looked as if it had been bombed, vir­tu­ally col­lapsed when the lat­est deadly tem­blor struck.

In a hastily called news con­fer­ence, Pre­mier Mario Monti pledged the gov­ern­ment will do “all that it must and all that is pos­si­ble in the briefest period to guar­an­tee the resump­tion of nor­mal life in this area that is so spe­cial, so impor­tant and so pro­duc­tive for Italy.”

The region around Bologna is among the country’s most pro­duc­tive. Italy is des­per­ately in need of its indus­tries, for the coun­try is in the midst of another reces­sion and strug­gling to tame its mas­sive debt as the Euro­pean debt cri­sis worsens.

Many vic­tims of the new quake, like the one nine days ago, were at work in huge ware­houses that col­lapsed, includ­ing one dead inside a machin­ery fac­tory in Mirandola.

Labor Min­is­ter Elsa Fornero sug­gested the destruc­tion to build­ings was out of pro­por­tion, con­sid­er­ing the mag­ni­tude of the quake.

“It is nat­ural that the earth shakes. But it is not nat­ural that build­ings col­lapse,” Fornero said, brief­ing law­mak­ers in the lower Cham­ber of Deputies in Parliament.

The mayor of San Felice sul Panaro told Sky News 24 that there were fatal­i­ties in his town, where Ital­ian media said a tower had collapsed.

Tall build­ings and schools were evac­u­ated as far away as Milan as a pre­cau­tion before peo­ple were allowed to re-enter. Train lines con­nect­ing Bologna with other north­ern cities were halted while author­i­ties checked for any damage.

When the quake hit, Monti was meet­ing with emer­gency offi­cials in Rome to dis­cuss the impact of the ear­lier quake, which struck in the mid­dle of the night and left at least 7,000 homeless.

The May 20 quake was described by Ital­ian emer­gency offi­cials as the worst to hit the region since the 1300s. In addi­tion to the deaths, it knocked down a clock tower and other centuries-old build­ings and caused mil­lions in losses to a region known for mak­ing Parme­san cheese. Its epi­cen­ter was about 35 kilo­me­ters (22 miles) north of Bologna.

It’s not clear why two large quakes have appeared just this month, said Jes­sica Turner, a geo­physi­cist with the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey in Golden, Colo. The basic dri­ver of the activ­ity is the same kind of geo­log­i­cal shift­ing that pro­duced the Alps, she said.

Prior to May 20, the last earth­quake in the region with mag­ni­tude that large was in 1501.

Res­i­dents had just been tak­ing ten­ta­tive steps toward resum­ing nor­mal life when the sec­ond quake struck. In Sant’Agostino, a day­care cen­ter had just reopened.

In the town of Con­cor­dia, the mayor had sched­uled a town meet­ing Tues­day evening to dis­cuss the after­math of the first quake. Instead, mayor Carlo Mar­chini con­firmed the death of one per­son struck by falling debris in the town’s his­toric center.

Italy’s friendly soc­cer match against Lux­em­bourg, a warm-up match for the Euro 2012 cham­pi­onships, was can­celed. The game had been sched­uled to be played Tues­day in Parma, just 40 miles (60 kilo­me­ters) west of the quake.

Posted by AP News on May 29 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.