Central Italy earthquake: death toll rises to 120 – as it happened

Britain’s Foreign Office has urged British citizens in the affected areas to follow the advice of the local authorities.

It said:

An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.2 struck central Italy during the early hours of 24 August. The earthquake was also felt in Rome. If you are in the affected area, you should follow the advice of the local authorities. If you are in Italy, Civil Protection have activated a hotline 800840840 for information. To learn more about what to do before, during, and after an earthquake visit the Protezione Civile website

Local News says the earthquake was about 4km beneath Accumoli (Rieti), which is now almost inaccessible.

Here is Amatrice, 14km to the south of Accumoli, before and after the quake.

View image in fullscreen

View image in fullscreen

Tourists close to the epicentre described the panic after the quake.

Nick Mortimer told the Guardian:

We are a family of nine gathering for a 60th birthday celebration in a villa and accompanying cottage near Amandola. The quake and at least one aftershock caused us to run out of the buildings in a bit of a panic. The first quake caused major shaking of the buildings but no obvious damage. The aftershocks have continued but seem to be less severe over the last hour.

Renata Morioni said:

I am on holiday in my home village in the Marche region, a few kilometres away from Amatrice and the epicentre. I felt a very strong shaking at about 3am ... It went on for ages – then again about 1/2 hour or 45 min later. It was like 1997. Terrifying.

And David from Rome, wrote:

Hello. I am an expat living in Rome. I was woken by the quake, our building swayed for a very long 20/30 seconds. I was still awake for the second one. Scary.

As the morning gets under way in Italy, it seems the damage is worse than feared. This is from Reuters:

“Now that daylight has come, we see that the situation is even more dreadful than we feared with buildings collapsed, people trapped under the rubble and no sound of life,” said the mayor of Accumoli, Stefano Petrucci.

“Three-quarters of the town is not there anymore,” the Amatrice mayor, Sergio Pirozzi, told RAI. “The aim now is to save as many lives as possible. There are voices under the rubble, we have to save the people there.”

AFP said another two bodies had been pulled from the rubble, bringing the death toll to five.

Here’s more of what Rainews is continuing to report on the quake.

It should be stressed that many of the first images coming through are from Amatrice, one of the towns close to the epicentre.

But a number of other local towns and municipalities have been affected. We’ll update you more as we hear from other parts of italy.

More images are coming through showing what appears to be the collapse of entire buildings. Rescue and search crews are being mobilised across the affected areas to begin searching through the rubble.

View image in fullscreen

My colleague Michael Slezak has just sent through a useful explanation outlining what the US Geological Survey has assessed about the cause of the quake and extent of damage. Here’s what he sent through:

The US Geological Survey has reported the earthquake was a result of a “normal fault”, which occurs when one plate is pushed down over another one.

In this case, the Tyrrhenian basin – the area between Sicily and Sardeninia – is expanding, pushing Eurasia towards Africa faster than the Eurasian and African plates can compress.

At the location of the earthquake, the Eurasian plate moves north-east at about 24mm each year. Eventually the tension builds up, and is released as the plates slide over one another.

In this case, as has been reported, the first main quake was significant, being measured at magnitude 6.2.

It’s the largest there since April 2009 when a magnitude 6.3 earthquake hit the same region, killing at least 295, injuring more than 1,000 and leaving at least 55,000 homeless. It resulted in significant landsliding in the local area, and was also followed by a vigorous aftershock sequence, including five other events of magnitude 5.0 or larger.

According to the US Geological Survey, the largest quake recorded in the area, of magnitude 6.7, took place on 13 January 1915, 68km to the south-southwest near Avezzano. It killed approximately 32,000 people.

More images are emerging from Rainews in Italy showing the extent of damage. There appear to be a number of buildings that have collapsed, with cars strewn beneath rubble

This is not the first time this region of Italy has been struck by a high intensity quake. Rieti, the epicentre of the quake, is only 60km from L’Aquila, where hundreds of people were killed in an earthquake in 2009.

More than 300 people died after a 6.3-magnitude tremor hit the capital of the mountainous Abruzzo region. The earthquake wrecked L’Aquila’s historic centre, injured more than 1,000 people and left tens of thousands homeless.

The disaster also sparked a long-running legal battle as a result of which some of Italy’s leading experts on natural disasters were convicted of giving false assurances about the risk of an earthquake in the region.

Three years after the quake, seven scientists from the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks were found guilty of offering an unjustifiably optimistic assessment to the local population a week before the disaster. By then, the area had been hit by 400 tremors over a period of four months and a local researcher had warned of the risk of a major earthquake, largely on the basis of abnormal radon emissions.