A series of strong earthquakes have hit snowbound central Italy, a region devastated by deadly tremors last year, killing one man and forcing schools and rail links to close. Four quakes of magnitude 5.2 and higher struck near the hill town of Amatrice, some 100km northeast of Rome, in the space of four hours on Wednesday.

Start the conversation, or Read more at The Otago Daily Times. </s> At least 22 guests and several staff members were in the Hotel Rigopiano, at the foot of the Gran Sasso mountain, when it was hit by the avalanche on Wednesday, Antonio Crocetta, a rescue group leader in the area told Italian state media.

Two people have been rescued from the site, the head of Italy's Civil Protection Department, Fabrizio Curcio, said in a media briefing. Weather conditions are making the rescue operation difficult, he said.

Rescue workers had not been able to reach the area until the early hours of Thursday as heavy snowfall hit central Italy for several days. The area is a popular ski destination, mostly with Italian tourists.

Central Italy was rocked by more than 10 tremors on Wednesday, four of them above a magnitude of 5, according to the US Geological Survey.

An initial 5.3-magnitude quake hit in the morning near the town of of Amatrice, a town devastated by powerful quakes last year. The tremors continued for more than six hours, with one as strong as magnitude 5.7. While the epicenter was 90 kilometers northeast of Rome, the quake was felt in the capital, sending people running from buildings in a panic. All the aftershocks have hit around Amatrice, in the mountainous regions of Marche, Lazio and Abruzzo. Nearly 300 people died in central Italy in quakes around Amatrice in August , and the town center, once popular with tourists, was reduced to rubble. </s> AMATRICE, Italy—The death toll from a devastating earthquake in central Italy climbed to at least 250 on Thursday and could rise further with rescue teams working for a second day to try to find survivors under the rubble of flattened towns.

The 6.2 magnitude quake struck a cluster of mountain communities 85 miles east of Rome early on Wednesday as people slept, destroying hundreds of homes.

An army of emergency workers using sniffer dogs clambered over piles of debris trying to find anyone still buried beneath, while cranes removed huge slabs of fallen masonry and trucks full of rubble left the area every few minutes.

On Thursday afternoon a violent aftershock measuring magnitude 4.3 sent rescuers fleeing from debris and stones that fell from the severely damaged bell tower of the 15th century church of St. Augustine in Amatrice.

The jolt, which struck fear and panic in survivors, detached the church's facade, leaving it leaning dangerously over the main street where rescuers worked.

The original earthquake was powerful enough to be felt in Bologna to the north and Naples to the south, both more than 135 miles from the epicenter.

Many of those killed or injured were holidaymakers in the four worst-hit towns - Amatrice, Pescara del Tronto, Arquata del Tronto and Accumoli - where seasonal visitors swell populations by up to tenfold the summer.

That makes it harder to track the deaths.

One Spaniard, five Romanians, and a number of other foreigners, some of them caregivers for the elderly, were believed to be among the dead, officials said.

Aerial video taken by drones showed swathes of Amatrice, last year voted one of Italy's most beautiful historic towns, completely flattened. The town, known across Italy and beyond for a local pasta dish, had been filling up for the 50th edition of a popular food festival this weekend.

The mayor said the bodies of 15-20 tourists were believed to be under the rubble of the town's Hotel Roma, which he said had about 32 guests when it collapsed on Wednesday morning.

About 365 people injured in Wednesday's quake were hospitalised, the Civil Protection department said, adding that about 5,000 people, including police, firefighters, army troops and volunteers, were involved in post-quake operations.

Rescuers working with emergency lighting in the darkness overnight saved a 10-year-old girl, pulling her alive from the rubble where she had lain for about 15 hours.

Many other children were not so lucky. A family of four, including two boys aged eight months and nine years, were buried when a church bell tower toppled into their house in nearby Accumoli. Local magistrates opened an investigation into whether there had been any negligence over the recently restored tower.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's cabinet was meeting on Thursday to decide emergency measures to help the affected communities.

"Today is a day for tears, tomorrow we can talk of reconstruction," he told reporters late on Wednesday.

The death toll appeared likely to rival or even surpass that from the last major earthquake to strike Italy, which killed more than 300 people in the central city of L'Aquila in 2009.

While hopes of finding more people alive diminished by the hour, firefighters' spokesman Luca Cari recalled that survivors were found in L'Aquila up to 72 hours after that quake.

Most of the damage was in the Lazio and Marche regions, with Lazio bearing the brunt of the devastation and the biggest toll. Neighbouring Umbria was also affected. All three regions are dotted with centuries-old buildings susceptible to earthquakes.

Italy sits on two fault lines, making it one of the most seismically active countries in Europe.

The country's most deadly earthquake since the start of the 20th century came in 1908, when an earthquake followed by a tsunami killed an estimated 80,000 people in the southern regions of Reggio Calabria and Sicily. </s> The metro system and some schools in Italy’s capital, Rome, were being evacuated Wednesday following a series of powerful earthquakes that struck the heart of the country.

An initial 5.3-magnitude quake hit central Italy 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) west-northwest of Amatrice, a town devastated by powerful temblors last year, the US Geological Survey (USGS) reported.

While the epicenter was 90 kilometers northeast of Rome, the quake was felt strongly in the capital, sending people running from buildings in a panic.

It struck at 10:25 am (4:25 am ET) at a shallow depth of 10 kilometers and has been followed by six aftershocks in the same area, including one as strong as 5.7, the USGS reported.

There are no immediate reports of casualties or damage but firefighters told CNN that heavy snow blocking roads has hampered their initial assessment.

Around 850 firefighters are engaged but there have been no requests for rescues so far, the Italian Fire Department said in a Twitter post.

Disaster authorities in Rome said they had been inundated with hundreds of calls from the city.

Officials have begun looking for cracks and damage to structures in the city, many of them ancient and vulnerable from previous tremors.

Nearly 300 people were killed in central Italy in an August quake and a series of aftershocks that reduced much of Amatrice’s center to rubble.

Another series of quakes hit the region in October, but the impact was small as most people had evacuated from the previous tremors. </s> Many dead are feared dead in avalanche-hit hotel after three strong earthquakes hit Italy,

"Many dead" in avalanche-hit hotel after quake, reports said.

Three strong earthquakes rocked central Italy on Monday with the tremors being felt in Rome.

Till Wednesday, there were no immediate reports of casualties but emergency services said they received thousands of phone calls from people in the quake zone.

The first quake measured a magnitude of 5.3 and struck between the Abruzzo regional capital L'Aquila and Rieti in northern Lazio at a depth of 10 km, Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanolgy reported.

The quake's epicentre was three kilometres from the Abruzzo town of Montereale and nine kilometres from the Lazio hill town of Amatrice, the institute said.

The second tremor's epicentre was in the same area and struck less than an an hour later at 11.15 a.m. with a magnitude of 5.4, according to the institute.

A third magnitude 5.3 quake followed immediately afterwards.

Rome's underground was evacuated after the second earthquake and so were several schools in the capital.

Schools in Rieti were also evacuated as a precaution, its Mayor Simone Petrangeli said.

The earthquakes followed 36 hours of continuous snowfall in the mountainous areas of central Italy, where 300,000 people went without electricity in Abruzzo on Tuesday.

The quakes are the latest to hit the central Apennines after 300 people died in a magnitude 6.2 tremor in August that flattened Amatrice's historic centre and devastated several nearby hill towns.

Two further quakes rattled the region in October, with the most powerful measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale. </s> ROME (CNN) — At least one person has died and many others are feared dead after an avalanche buried a hotel in central Italy following a series of earthquakes.

At least 22 guests and several staff members were at the Hotel Rigopiano at the foot of the Gran Sasso mountain when it was hit by the avalanche on Wednesday, Antonio Crocetta, a rescue group leader in the area told Italian state media.

Two people have been rescued from the site, the head of Italy’s Civil Protection Department, Fabrizio Curcio, said in a media briefing. Weather conditions are making the rescue operation difficult, he said.

Rescue workers had not been able to reach the area until the early hours of Thursday as heavy snowfall hit central Italy for several days. The area is a popular ski destination, mostly with Italian tourists.

Central Italy was rocked by more than 10 tremors on Wednesday, four of them above a magnitude of 5, according to the US Geological Survey.

An initial 5.3-magnitude quake hit in the morning near the town of of Amatrice, a town devastated by powerful temblors last year, and the tremors continued for more than six hours, including one as strong as 5.7.

While the epicenter was 90 kilometers northeast of Rome, the quake was felt strongly in the capital, sending people running from buildings in a panic.

All the aftershocks have hit around Amatrice, in the mountainous regions of Marche, Lazio and Abruzzo.

Nearly 300 people died in central Italy in quakes around Amatrice in August, and the town center, once popular with tourists, was reduced to rubble. </s> ROME (CNN) -- The metro system and some schools in Italy's capital, Rome, were being evacuated Wednesday following a series of powerful earthquakes that struck the heart of the country.

An initial 5.3-magnitude quake hit central Italy 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) west-northwest of Amatrice, a town devastated by powerful temblors last year, the US Geological Survey (USGS) reported.

While the epicenter was 90 kilometers northeast of Rome, the quake was felt strongly in the capital, sending people running from buildings in a panic.

It struck at 10:25 am (4:25 am ET) at a shallow depth of 10 kilometers and has been followed by eight aftershocks in the same area, including one as strong as 5.7, the USGS reported.

There are no immediate reports of casualties or damage but firefighters told CNN that heavy snow blocking roads has hampered their initial assessment.

Around 850 firefighters are engaged but there have been no requests for rescues so far, the Italian Fire Department said in a Twitter post.

Disaster authorities in Rome said they had been inundated with hundreds of calls from the city.

Officials have begun looking for cracks and damage to structures in the city, many of them ancient and vulnerable from previous tremors.

All the aftershocks have all hit around Amatrice, in the mountainous regions of Marche, Lazio and Abruzzo.

Nearly 300 people died in central Italy in quakes around Amatrice in August, and the town center, once popular with tourists, was reduced to rubble.

Another series of quakes hit the region in October, but the impact was small as most people had evacuated from the previous tremors.

"I don't know if we did something bad. That's what I have been asking since yesterday," Amatrice Mayor Sergio Pirozzi told the AFP news agency.

"We have got up to two meters of snow and now another earthquake. What can I say? I have no words."

Italy lies atop the convergence of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates, making it the most quake-exposed country in the Mediterranean. </s> Having not yet recovered from the severe earthquakes of recent months, central Italy was struck by 10 earthquakes in succession over a four-hour period Wednesday, all of them registering over 4.0 on the Richter Scale.

Wednesday’s earthquakes varied in magnitude between 4.1 and 5.7, and several lasted a significant amount of time.

The first quake, measuring 5.3, struck the beleaguered city of Amatrice at 10:25am local time, and the shock waves could be felt in contiguous regions and all the way south in Rome. Amatrice had already been laid waste by a powerful earthquake last August 24, which destroyed the town and left nearly 300 dead. After the quake, the mayor of Amatrice announced: “The town is gone.”

The second quake—the strongest of all—hit just a few miles from the epicenter of the first, 45 minutes later. In all, five of the 10 quakes struck within five miles of Amatrice.

The bell tower of the church of Sant’Agostino was one of the few monuments in Amatrice to survive last summer’s earthquake, but Wednesday’s quakes finished the job, bringing the tower crumbling to the ground.

To add insult to injury, central Italy had been covered with snow prior to the quakes and was suffering from exceptionally cold temperatures.

Civil Protection Chief Fabrizio Curcio said that the wide scope of the tremors, along with the snow, made a comprehensive assessment of the situation difficult. “The situation is quite complicated,” Curcio said. “We are receiving reports from all over the nation. Obviously the quake was felt clearly all over the center, as far as the capital.”

In Rome, children were sent home from school at mid morning, public buildings were evacuated and authorities shut down the subway system.

Wednesday’s seismic activity was the third major event of its kind in Italy in less than half a year. The August 24 earthquake demolished several towns of central Italy, including Amatrice, and three more quakes during the night of Oct 26-27 wreaked still more devastation and displaced thousands of persons.

The October earthquakes reportedly shook Rome’s world heritage ancient buildings, including the Colosseum and Pantheon, and some of the damage has not yet been repaired. </s> A 4.7-magnitude aftershock has hit the Italian town of Amatrice as rescuers and emergency teams continue their search of three flattened hilltop towns and Italy declares a state of emergency in the region.

With the provisional death toll from Wednesday’s 6.2-magnitude quake standing at 267, including several foreigners, the Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, authorised a preliminary €50m (£43m) in emergency funding for the stricken zone.

The powerful aftershock, the latest of more than 500 since the initial quake, hit the area shortly after dawn on Friday, sending up plumes of thick grey dust, shaking buildings that were still standing and fuelling fears of fresh collapses which could hamper the rescue operation.

In a first raft of emergency relief measures, Renzi cancelled residents’ taxes in and around the hardest-hit towns of Amatrice, Accumoli, Arquata del Tronto and Pescara del Tronto, between 60 and 90 miles (95-145km) north-east of Rome.

Most of the confirmed deaths were in Amatrice, where 193 people had died, includingthree Britons: Marcos Burnett, 14, who was on holiday with his parents and sister, and 55-year-old Will Henniker-Gotley and his wife Maria, 51, from south London. Marco’s parents are being treated for minor injuries in hospital.

The UK foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, said on Thursday that extra staff had been sent to the region. Six Romanians, a Canadian, a Spaniard and a Salvadoran were also killed.

The 2,500-strong population of the medieval hilltop town, voted one of Italy’s most beautiful historic towns last year, was swollen with summer visitors, many from Rome, in anticipation of its popular annual food festival this weekend.

But while 215 people had been pulled alive from the rubble since Wednesday and more than 360 were being treated in hospital, questions were mounting as to why there had been so many deaths in an area known for decades to be the most seismically hazardous in Europe.

After a 2009 earthquake in nearby L’Aquila left 300 people dead, authorities released €1bn to upgrade buildings in the region, but takeup has been low. Despite eight devastating earthquakes in 40 years, experts estimate 70% of Italy’s buildings do not meet seismic standards.

“Here, in the middle of a seismic zone, nothing has ever been done,” Dario Nanni, of Italy’s architects’ council, told Agence France-Presse. “It does not cost that much more when renovating a building to make it comply with earthquake standards. But less than 20% of buildings do.”

The culture minister said 293 historical buildings had been damaged or destroyed by the quake and public prosecutors announced an investigation into whether anyone could be held responsible.

Meanwhile, Renzi announced plans to help the country prepare better and address poor building standards, saying Italy should “have a plan that is not just limited to the management of emergency situations”. 



But the prime minister said suggestions that the country could easily construct quake-proof buildings were “absurd”. It was difficult to imagine, he said after a cabinet meeting, that the level of destruction from Wednesday’s quake “could have been avoided simply by using different building technology. We’re talking about medieval-era towns.”

In Amatrice and the surrounding small towns and villages hopes of finding more survivors were fading; no one had been recovered alive since Wednesday night. The focus was now on helping the more than 1,200 people left homeless.

About 5,400 emergency workers, firefighters, soldiers and volunteers, helped by 50 sniffer dogs, continued to sift through piles of cement, rock and twisted metal, many pointing out that the last survivor from the L’Aquila quake was found 72 hours after it struck.

“We will work relentlessly until the last person is found, and make sure no one is trapped,” said one rescue team spokesman, Lorenzo Botti.

Some survivors, having slept in their cars or in tent cities set up outside the towns, were allowed to pick up essential items from their homes on Thursday accompanied by rescue workers.

“Last night we slept in the car. Tonight, I don’t know,” said Nello Caffini, carrying his sister-in-law’s belongings on his head through Pescara del Tronto, which was almost completely destroyed.

Italy’s older buildings are not obliged to conform to anti-seismic building codes, and experts estimate it could cost more than €90bn to reinforce all the country’s historic buildings. Targeted improvement work, though, could be effective.

Compounding the problem is the fact that many more modern buildings do not comply with regulations when they are built, and often prove deadlier than older constructions when an earthquake strikes.

News reports in Amatrice said investigators were looking in particular into the town’s Romolo Capranica school, which was restored in 2012 using funds provided after the L’Aquila quake. It all but collapsed on Wednesday, while the town’s 13th-century clock tower remained standing.

“We are able to prevent all these deaths,” Armando Zambrano, of the national council of engineers, told the Associated Press. “The problem is actually doing it. These tragedies keep happening because we don’t intervene. After each tragedy we say we will act but then the weeks go by and nothing happens.”
Four earthquakes of magnitude 5.1 or higher strike near Amatrice, Italy, forcing evacuation of some schools and the Rome Metro. No deaths are reported from the quakes.