Quake rocks central Italy: "It's panic non-stop"

A devastating earthquake, measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale, rattled central Italy in the early hours of Monday morning. The quake’s epicentre was located under the city of L’Aquila, in the picturesque Abruzzi region, some 100km northeast of Rome. Emergency services say at least 100 people perished under the crumbling city centre, though many more are feared dead as rescuers scramble to clear the rubble. 

Footage of the damage posted on YouTube

Postée sur YouTube par Isabo81News

A residential neighbourhood of L'Aquila after the quake

The pictures were taken by Paolo Busi and posted on his Facebook page.

"The village of Onna (...) has vanished"

Paolo Busi runs a small hotel in the outskirts of L’Aquila. Breathless and in tears, he gave us his account by phone, interrupted by frequent aftershocks.

It’s panic non-stop. We keep running out of the hotel to escape the aftershocks. Some are already talking about spending the night in their cars, for safety’s sake.

In the centre of town the churches have crumbled, and so has part of the hospital. The scariest of all is the collapse of the students’ residence. It must have been packed with students returning after the weekend. People there are digging among the rubble with their bare hands. Various camps have been set up in the stadium and along the main roads to host the people evacuated from the centre.

The school collapsed in my neighbourhood, but fortunately there was nobody inside at the time. I took pictures of a villa nearby; it was over a century old and had survived countless earthquakes. But now it’s just a pile of rubble.

People are very worried about the villages nearby. We know they’ve been badly hit, but it’s impossible to access them because the roads are blocked. Police managed to reach the village of Onna, only to report that it has vanished.

I’m scared of what might happen. We make a living out of tourism. I run a small hotel, and this morning alone I received 11 cancellations."