Rescue crews using bulldozers and their bare hands raced to dig out survivors from a strong earthquake that reduced three central Italian towns to rubble Wednesday. The death toll stood at 120 Joey Bosa Jersey , but the number of dead and missing was uncertain given the huge number of vacationers in the area for summer's final days.
Residents wakened before dawn by the temblor emerged from their crumbled homes to find what they described as apocalyptic scenes "like Dante's Inferno," with entire blocks of buildings turned into piles of sand and rock, thick dust choking the air and a putrid smell of gas.
"The town isn't here anymore," said Sergio Pirozzi, the mayor of the hardest-hit town, Amatrice. "I believe the toll will rise."
The magnitude 6 quake struck at 3:36 a.m. and was felt across a broad swath of central Italy, including Rome, where residents woke to a long swaying followed by aftershocks. The temblor shook the Lazio region and Umbria and Le Marche on the Adriatic coast.
Premier Matteo Renzi visited the zone Wednesday, greeted rescue teams and survivors and said the casualty toll stood at 120 dead and was likely to rise. Another at least 368 were injured. He promised the quake-prone area that "No family, no city, no hamlet will be left behind."
Hardest hit were the tiny towns of Amatrice and Accumoli near Rieti, some 100 kilometers northeast of Rome, and Pescara del Tronto, some 25 kilometers further east. Italy's civil protection agency, which was coordinating the rescue and care for survivors, said dozens were injured and thousands in need of temporary housing, though it stressed the numbers were fluid.
Italy's health minister, Beatrice Lorenzin, visiting the devastated area, said many of the victims were children: The quake zone is a popular spot for Romans with second homes, and the population swells in August when most Italians take their summer holiday before school resumes.
The medieval center of Amatrice was devastated, with the hardest-hit half of the city cut off by rescue crews digging by hand to get to trapped residents. The birthplace of the famed spaghetti all'amatriciana bacon and tomato sauce, it is made up of 69 hamlets that teams from around Italy were working to reach with sniffer dogs, earth movers and other heavy equipment.
Rocks and metal tumbled onto the streets of the city center and dazed residents huddled in piazzas as more than 200 aftershocks jolted the region into the early morning hours, some as strong as magnitude 5.1.
"The whole ceiling fell but did not hit me," marveled resident Maria Gianni. "I just managed to put a pillow on my head and I wasn't hit, luckily, just slightly injured my leg."
Another woman, sitting in front of her destroyed home with a blanket over her shoulders, said she didn't know what had become of her loved ones.
"It was one of the most beautiful towns of Italy and now there's nothing left," she said, too distraught to give her name. "I don't know what we'll do."
As the August sun bore down, residents, civil protection workers and even priests dug with shovels, bulldozers and their bare hands to reach survivors. Dozens were pulled out alive: There was relief as a woman emerged on a stretcher from one building, followed by a dog.
"She's alive!" two women cheered as they ran up the street in Pescara del Tronto, after an 8-year-old girl was pulled from the rubble after nightfall.
And there were wails when bodies emerged.
"Unfortunately, 90 percent we pull out are dead, but some make it, that's why we are here," said Christian Bianchetti, a volunteer from Rieti who was working in Amatrice.
A steady column of dump trucks brought tons of twisted metal, rock and cement down the hill and onto the highway toward Rome, along with a handful of ambulances bringing the injured to Rome hospitals.
"We need chain saws, shears to cut iron bars and jacks to remove beams. Everything, we need everything," civil protection worker Andrea Gentili told The Associated Press in the early hours of the recovery. Italy's national blood drive association appealed for donations to Rieti's hospital.
Despite a massive rescue and relief effort — with army, Alpine crews, carabineri, firefighters, Red Cross crews and volunteers, it wasn't enough: A few kilometers north of Amatrice, in Illica, residents complained that rescue workers were slow to arrive and that loved ones were trapped.
"We are waiting for the military," said resident Alessandra Cappellanti. "There is a base in Ascoli, one in Rieti, and in L'Aquila. And we have not seen a single soldier. We pay! It's disgusting!"
Agostino Severo, a Rome resident visiting Illica, said workers eventually arrived after an hour or so. "We came out to the piazza, and it looked like Dante's Inferno," he said. "People crying for help, help."
The magnitude 6 quake's epicenter was located near Accumoli and Arquata del Tronto and had a shallow depth of just four kilometers, Italy's geological institute said. Generally, shallow earthquakes pack a bigger punch and tend to be more damaging than deeper quakes.
"The Apennine mountains in central Italy have the highest seismic hazard in Western Europe and earthquakes of this magnitude are common," noted Dr Richard Walters, a lecturer in Earth sciences at Durham University in Britain.
The head of Italy's civil protection service, Fabrizio Curcio, noted that the region is popular with Romans escaping the heat of the capital to their country houses, swelling the population during the summer months. This weekend, Amatrice was due to celebrate its annual festival honoring its native pasta dish, possibly adding to the number of people in town.
The devastation harked back to the 2009 quake that killed more than 300 people in and around L'Aquila, about 90 kilometers (55 miles) south of the latest quake. The town, which still hasn't full
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