ROME — An earthquake struck the northern Italian region of Emilia Romagna on Sunday, killing five people, wounding at least 50 and damaging historic buildings as well as warehouses and factories, officials said.
Italy/Reuters
A woman carrying her child in front of a damaged building in Sant’Agostino, Italy, on Sunday.
The earthquake, with a magnitude of 6.0 according to the U.S. Geological Survey, was felt as far away as Liguria on the country’s eastern coast and Friuli Venezia Giulia in the west. Church roofs crumbled, Renaissance-era towers were reduced to rubble and large cracks rippled through apartment blocks and villas in dozens of small towns, leaving scores homeless.
Four men working the night shift in different factories on the outskirts of the small town of Sant’Agostino died when the buildings in which they were working collapsed.
Giovanni Gregori, an earthquake expert with Italy’s national research council, said on Sky News Italia that given the magnitude of the quake, the death toll “could have been much worse.”
Many areas of Italy are considered to be at high risk for earthquakes. A quake in 1976 killed nearly a thousand people in Friuli Venezia Giulia, and almost 3,000 died in the Campania earthquake of 1980. Three years ago, an earthquake in the area of L’Aquila, in central Italy, killed more than 300 people. While rebuilding has advanced in many villages in the region, the historic center of L’Aquila itself remains a ghost town and there has been public outcry over delays in reconstruction there.
But in Emilia Romagna, seismic events of this kind have been more rare. Mr. Gregori said that the last quake of this magnitude in the area was in the 14th century. “For man, seven centuries are a lot, for nature it is nothing,” he said.
“We’re not used to events of this kind,” said Giovanni Morandi, editor in chief of Il Resto Del Carlino, a local daily newspaper.
Minor aftershocks were felt in the region Sunday morning, and many churches canceled services.
Areas in some of the hardest-hit towns were cordoned off while officials expressed concern about the stability of some historic towers. Meanwhile, engineers and surveyors traveled through the area, monitoring roads and bridges, according to Stefano Vaccari, the lawmaker who oversees the civil protection agency for the Province of Modena.
Officials said that schools would be closed for several days, and that dormitories, some with up to 1000 beds, would be set up in various towns for those in need of shelter.
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