A powerful earthquake struck a mountainous region in central Italy as residents slept on Monday morning, killing nearly 100 people, injuring 1,500, and making up to 70,000 homeless, emergency services and rescue officials said. It was the worst quake to hit Italy in nearly 30 years and rescue workers searching for victims trapped under the rubble said the death toll was rising. The temblor, measured 6.2 on the Richter scale according to the Italian geophysical institute, hit the 13th-century mountain town of L'Aquila, some 100 km from Rome, at about 3.30 A.M. “When the quake hit, I rushed out to my father's house and opened the main door and everything had collapsed. My father is surely dead. I called for help but no one was around,” said Camillo Berardi in L'Aquila. Many of the 68,000 residents fled into the streets as more than a dozen aftershocks rattled the buildings. Most of the dead were in L'Aquila and surrounding towns and villages in the Abruzzo region. Rubble blocked roads and hampered rescue teams. Old women wailed and residents armed with nothing but bare hands helped firefighters and rescue workers tear through the rubble. By late evening, rescuers pulled a total of 60 survivors from collapsed buildings, firefighters said. A tent village was set up to accommodate between 16,000 and 20,000 people by nightfall. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi canceled a trip to Moscow and declared a national emergency. “No one will be abandoned to their fate,” he told a news conference in the Abruzzo capital of L'Aquila. He said 30 million euros ($40 million had been earmarked to help the region. Berlusconi warned that more quakes were possible and said no one would be allowed to remain in damaged homes. He said many buildings in the city's historic center were at risk of collapse. Some 15,000 buildings were declared damaged and off limits. Worst in nearly 30 years The quake – the worst to hit Italy in nearly 30 years – brought down many Renaissance era and Baroque buildings, including the dome on one of L'Aquila's centuries-old churches. The city's cathedral was also damaged. The city's superintendent for archeology said the Baths of Caracalla -- the Roman public baths built between AD 212 and 216 and a popular tourist attraction -- had suffered some damage. Older houses and buildings made of stone collapsed like straw houses. “Some towns in the area have been virtually destroyed in their entirety,” a somber Gianfranco Fini, speaker of the lower house of parliament, said before the chamber observed a moment of silence. A Civil Protection Department spokesman, said the quake may have made up to 70,000 people homeless. Some 26 cities and towns were seriously damaged. In the small town of Onna alone, 10 people were killed, said a Reuters photographer who saw a mother and her infant daughter carried away in the same coffin. Hospitals appealed for help from doctors and nurses throughout Italy. The stench of gas filled some parts of the mountain towns and villages as mains ruptured. Residents of Rome, which is rarely hit by seismic activity, were woken by the quake, which rattled furniture and swayed lights in most of central Italy. World leaders offer sympathy, aid World leaders expressed their sympathy for the quake victims. The messages came from US President Barack Obama who was visiting Turkey, Pope Benedict XVI, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Serbian President Boris Tadic, among others. The European Union, Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Israel and Russia immediately stepped forward with offers of aid, officials told the ANSA agency. But Italian civil protection head Agostino Miozzo said such aid was not immediately needed.
