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5.9-Magnitude Earthquake Strikes northern Italy, Bomb Blast in Southern Town of Brindisi

 

5.9-magnitude quake hits northern Italy, death toll rises to 7

SANT'AGOSTINO, Italy, May 20, 2012 (Xinhua) --

The death toll of a 5.9-magnitude earthquake that hit northern Italy in the early hours of Sunday morning has risen to seven, local media said.

The seventh victim of the earthquake was an 86-year-old female, who felt ill after the strong shock and died from a stroke after being sent into hospital.

Four night workers, including a young foreign migrant, died in the collapse of three factories near the city of Ferrara in the central Emilia Romagna region.

An over-100-year-old lady was killed in her bed and another 37-year-old woman died by heart attack during the quake, according to local media.

At least 50 people were injured in the earthquake, while about 3,000 displaced people who left their house which were considered not safe enough for living would spend the next nights in hotel, public structures or tents set up by rescue men.

According to Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), the earthquake had its epicenter between the cities of Ferrara and Modena at a depth of 6.3 km. In several Italian regions including Tuscany, Piedmont and Lombardy, the shock was felt without causing great loss.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, who is in the United States attending a NATO summit, decided to return early and would arrive in Italy on Monday morning.

In the most hit town of Sant'Agostino, the municipality was demolished and historic buildings were strongly damaged and evacuated.

One five-year-old girl was rescued after remaining trapped in debris following the quake, a police officer, Giampiero Natoli, told local media.

Local authorities ordered residents not to get close to historic buildings, while the eldest and seriously sick people were rushed to nearby hospitals for precaution.

Franco Gabrelli, head of Italian Civil Protection, said the priority is that people with house damaged in the earthquake and considered not safe for living can spend night in "acceptable conditions," after he finished an emergency meeting held in Ferrara.

"Our municipal operation centers are collecting people's requests, we will check availability of hotels and meanwhile we are preparing a plan for setting up the tents," he said.

Asked about the risks of aftershocks, Gabrelli said it is common that a big earthquake is followed by other shocks.

A powerful aftershock measuring magnitude 5.1 hit the same area after the 5.9-magnitude earthquake.

According to the INGV, the powerful aftershock had its epicenter between the cities of Ferrara and Modena in the region of Emilia Romagna, with a depth of 4.7 km.

The INGV said more than 50 aftershocks, most of them below magnitude 4.0, followed the 5.9-magnitude one.

The artistic damage was considerable, as many monumental historical buildings were hit, said Paola Gazzola, civil protection councilor of Emilia Romagna region.

In 2009, an earthquake of 6.3 magnitude killed nearly 300 people in the Italian central city of L'Aquila.

Editor: Mu Xuequan

Earthquake rattles northern Italy

France 24, May 21, 2012, By Kyle G. Brown (video) News Wires (text)

REUTERS -

A strong earthquake rocked a large swathe of northern Italy early on Sunday, killing at least four people, injuring dozens and seriously damaging historic buildings such as churches, bell towers and a mediaeval castle.

The quake, which the U.S. Geological Survey recorded at magnitude 6.0, struck at 4:04 a.m. (0204 GMT) while most people were sleeping, and thousands ran into the streets in their night clothes in panic.

“I ran out in my underwear,” one man told Italian television.

The epicentre of the quake, the strongest to hit Italy in three years, was in the plains near Modena in the Emilia-Romagna region of the Po river valley, and the tremor was felt as far west as Liguria, bordering France, and the Friuli region bordering Slovenia.

The roof of the cathedral in Mirandola collapsed. “Our school children were to receive their first communion here this morning. If it had happened then it would have been a disaster,” the local priest said.

Also badly damaged was the 14th century Estense Castle in the town of San Felice Sul Panaro.

The tops of several of the smaller towers of the famous mediaeval castle, the town’s biggest attraction, collapsed and there were fears that the main tower could crumble. Three of the town’s churches were severely damaged.

One person, believed to be a Moroccan man working a night shift in a polyester factory, died when he was hit by falling debris, and two men, also on the night shift, were killed when part of a modern ceramics factory made of steel collapsed in the town of Sant’ Agostino.

“He wasn’t supposed to be there. He changed shifts with a friend who wanted to go to the beach,” the mother of one of the victims told state television.

The lifeless body of a fourth victim was spotted under rubble in another factory.

Gashes, cracks, gas leaks

The quake left a large hole and gashes in the side of the Sant’ Agostino town hall, which officials said was in danger of total collapse. Gas was also leaking in the town.

“I am 83 and I have never felt anything like this,” said Lina Gardenghi, a resident of Bondeno, the town where one of the workers was killed.

Two other people, one of them a German woman, were reported to have died after suffering heart attacks because of the quake, and several dozen people suffered minor injuries.

Rescue workers were checking reports that other people were buried under rubble and were preparing to house those whose homes had been damaged or destroyed.

There was serious damage to historic buildings and churches in the provinces of Modena and Ferrara, and the quake also shook major towns such as Bologna, Rovigo, Verona and Mantua.

A series of strong aftershocks hit the area, the strongest measuring 5.1, and local mayors ordered residents to stay in the open.

The quake was centred 22 miles (35 km) north-northwest of Bologna at a relatively shallow depth of 6.3 miles (10 km), the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The last major quake to hit Italy was a 6.3 magnitude quake in the central city of L’Aquila in 2009, which killed nearly 300 people.

After that quake, then Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi moved a G8 meeting that was to have been held in Sardinia to near L’Aquila in a show of solidarity with the victims.

 

Deadly blast hits high school in southern Italy

France 24, May 21, 2012, By Seema Gupta in Italy (video) News Wires (text)

AP -

A bomb exploded outside a high school in southern Italy named after a slain anti-Mafia prosecutor as students arrived for class Saturday, killing a teenage girl and wounding several other classmates, officials said.

The device went off a few minutes before 8 a.m. in the Adriatic port town of Brindisi just as students milled outside, chatting and getting ready for class at the Morvillo-Falcone vocational institute. The school is named after the slain anti-Mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone and his wife, Francesca Morvillo, a judge who was also killed in the 1992 bombing in Sicily by Cosa Nostra.

One of the wounded students, a girl who was walking alongside the victim outside the school in Brindisi, was reported in critical condition after surgery. Officials said at least seven students were injured, but some news reports put the figure at 10.

Brindisi’s Perrino hospital, where the wounded were taken, declined to give out information by phone.

Dr. Paola Ciannamea, a Perrino physician who helped treat the injured at the hsopital, told reporters there that one of the injured was a teenage girl who was in grave but stable condition after surgery. She added that plastic surgery was still being performed on some of the other injured, who suffered burns in the blast.

AFP - Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti condemned a school bombing that killed one teenager and seriously injured five others in the southern city of Brindisi on Saturday. On the margins of a G8 summit at Camp David in the United States, Monti described the bombing as a "tragic" and "criminal" act that was "without precedent." Monti also expressed his condolences to the victims of the attack, which has plunged Italy into shock. It is not yet known who carried out the blast. The explosive was composed of three gas canisters with a timer device hidden in a container next to a wall just outside the school, Italian media reported.

An unidentified hospital official, briefing reporters there, said the critically injured student was in stable condition after surgery and that several of the injured students had suffered burns and is undergoing plastic surgery.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility.

Italy has been marking the 20th anniversary of the Sicilian highway attack, but it was unclear if there was an organized crime link to Saturday’s explosion.

In Brindisi, local civil protection agency official Fabiano Amati said a female student died of her wounds after being taken to a hospital and at least seven other students were hospitalized.

Sky TG24TV said the victim was a 16-year-old girl.

Interior Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri, in charge of domestic security, said she was “struck” by the fact that the school was named after the slain hero and his wife, but she cautioned that investigators at that point “have no elements” to blame the school attack on organized crime.

“It’s not the usual (method) for the Mafia,” she told Sky in a phone interview. The Sicilian-based Cosa Nostra usually targets specific figures, such as judges, prosecutors, turncoats or rival mobsters in attacks, and not civilian targets such as schools.

“The big problem now is to get intelligence” on the attack, said Cancellieri. She added that she had spoken by phone with Italian Premier Mario Monti, in the United States for the G-8 summit.

Outside the school, textbooks, their pages flipping in a breeze, notebooks and a backpack littered the street near where the bomb exploded. At the sound of the blast, students already inside the building ran outside of the school to see what happened.

Officials initially said the device was in a trash bin outside the Morvillo-Falcone school, but later ANSA, reporting from Brindisi, said the device, consisting of three cooking-gas canisters, a detonator and possibly a timer, had been placed on a low wall ringing the school. The wall was damaged and charred from the blast.

Public high schools in Italy hold classes on Saturday mornings.

A school official, Valeria Vitale, told Sky that most of the pupils were

females. The school specializes in training for jobs in fashion and social services, she said.

The bombing also follows a number of attacks against Italian officials and government or public buildings by a group of anarchists, which prompted authorities to assign bodyguards for 550 individuals and deploy 16,000 law enforcement officers nationwide.

Minister Cancellieri indicated that after the school blast, authorities’ sense of what could be a possible target had been tested.

“Anything now could be a ‘sensitive’ target,” she said.

Austerity measures, spending cuts and new and higher taxes, all part of economist Monti’s plan to save Italy from succumbing to the debt crisis roiling Greece, have angered many citizens, and social tensions have ratcheted up.

“The economic crisis doesn’t help,” Cancellieri said, referring to the tensions.

Brindisi is a lively port town in Puglia, the region in the southeastern “heel” of the Italian boot-shaped peninsula. An organized crime syndicate known as the Sacred United Crown, has been traditionally active there, but crackdowns have been widely considered by authorities to have lessened the organization’s power in the region.

Date created : 19/05/2012