Hopes fade as Italy death quake toll rises

Relatives of the missing watched in agony today as rescuers dug by hand for survivors in the earthquake ravaged Italian city of L’Aquila.

The death toll from the country’s worst quake in nearly 30 years jumped to 207 as bodies were recovered and identified.

Tent camps housed some of the 50,000 left homeless by Italy’s worst earthquake in three decades, but many spent the night in the chill mountain air without blankets or covers.

Officials said between 10,000 and 15,000 buildings were either damaged or destroyed in the Abruzzo region.

Aerial footage showed the scale of the destruction among L’Aquila’s Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque and Renaissance architectural treasures. Roofs were missing from modern buildings, old churches had fallen walls and parts of medieval buildings had tumbled to the ground.

Chief firefighter Sergio Basti said rescue crews had to “surgically” remove big chunks of fallen masonry since the four were in a hard-to-reach spot and the building was so unstable.

Hopes were briefly raised when rescuers located four students trapped inside a partially collapsed dormitory, but they were declared dead at the scene.

Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi surveyed the devastated region by helicopter and said the rescue efforts would continue for two more days – “until it is certain that there is no one else alive.”

He said 15 people were still missing and that at least 100 of the roughly 1,000 injured people were in serious condition.

Rescuers were still trying to reach the area’s more isolated hamlets.

While the elderly, children and pregnant women were given priority at tent camps in the area, others were sleeping in cars or making arrangements to stay with relatives or in second homes out of the quake zone.

Some elderly people appeared to be disoriented as they walked among the tents, and people tending them complained about the lack of blankets.

Rescue workers arrived from throughout Italy, from as far away as Venice and Genoa. Part of L’Aquila’s main hospital was evacuated for fear of collapse, and few operating rooms were in use. Bloodied victims waited in hospital hallways or in the courtyard and many were being treated in the open.

Italy’s national police chief, Antonio Manganelli, said several people had been arrested for looting from abandoned houses.

The quake took a severe toll on L’Aquila’s prized architectural heritage. Many landmarks were damaged, including part of the red-and-white stone basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio.

The bell tower of the 16th-century San Bernardino church and the cupola of the Baroque Sant’Agostino church also fell.

Stones tumbled down from the city’s cathedral, which was rebuilt after a 1703 earthquake.

Damage to monuments was reported as far away as Rome, where cracks appeared at the thermal baths built in the Third century by the emperor Caracalla.

It was Italy’s deadliest quake since November 1980, when a 6.9-magnitude shock hit southern regions, leveling villages and causing 3,000 deaths.

The last major quake to hit central Italy was in the south-central Molise region in October 2002, killing 28 people, of which 27 were children who died when their school collapsed.