Earthquake

Citation

(2003), "Earthquake", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 12 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.2003.07312eac.003

Earthquake

Earthquake

1 November 2002 – San Giuliano di Puglia, Italy

Italian rescuers battled through the night in a frantic search for survivors of an earthquake which killed at least 20 people, including 18 children, crushed when their school collapsed. Desperate parents, some shrieking and wailing, held an all-night vigil as they waited for news of their missing children, who had been enjoying a Halloween party when the quake struck yesterday morning. The tremor, the strongest to hit Italy since 1997, rocked the south-central region of Molise, toppling the nursery school in the medieval town of San Giuliano di Puglia and leaving at least 3,000 temporarily homeless. A senior police official said at least ten people were still missing and hundreds of masked policemen and fire-fighters using spotlights in the darkness sifted frantically through the debris. More than 30 people had been pulled out alive. “We’re trying to get them out as soon as possible because time is working against us”, said one rescue worker. Voices had been heard in the rubble but rescuers said they were getting fainter. A total of 18 children, most of them aged six, were killed at the school, emergency services said. Two elderly women in the town were also killed when their houses collapsed. “There’s nothing to say. It’s a tragedy,” said Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who flew to the earthquake region in a helicopter. More than 3,000 people fled their shattered homes in the region after the quake struck, civil protection officials said. At least 1,000 were evacuated from San Giuliano di Puglia and a further 1,000 from Larino, as well as hundreds from outlying villages. Berlusconi visited injured children in hospitals in the towns of Larino and Termoli early today. Officials said more children could have been trapped but many were outside in the schoolyard for the party when the quake struck. Psychologists were called in to help parents at the scene as ambulances stood by to whisk away survivors. The quake was felt from Rome to Potenza in southern Italy, 220 miles apart, but the Molise region was the hardest hit. Officials said that more than 130 people had already checked into hospitals in Molise.

2 November 2002 – Residents from the southern Italian village where 29 people were killed in an earthquake have spent a second night in the open. Authorities ordered the evacuation of San Giuliano di Puglia after it was hit by further tremors. Residents were taken to sleep in tents. The bodies of all 26 children and three adults killed by the quake have now been recovered from the rubble of the village primary school. Correspondents say villagers’ attention – and anger – is now directed at why the school collapsed when surrounding buildings remained standing. An entire class of six-year-olds were among the victims killed in the ruins of the school, which was built 50 years ago and had had a concrete second floor added recently. Grieving relatives had to endure a series of aftershocks yesterday – the strongest of which was 5.3 on the Richter scale – and there were further tremors in the early hours of today. The 1,200 inhabitants of the close-knit community have been transferred to tented camps which have been set up in a valley below the town. The authorities have declared that homes in the village are unsafe and out of bounds until further notice. Civil protection officials are expected to meet today to discuss protection for the region, which had not been designated a high-risk earthquake zone. Infrastructure Minister Pietro Lunardi is reported to have set up a commission of inquiry into the collapse of the school, which was the most badly damaged building in the mediaeval village. Attention is focusing on building standards, particularly as illegal construction is not uncommon in southern Italy. There are also questions about why the region had not been officially designated an earthquake-prone zone – a tag which would have required stronger, anti-earthquake building regulations. And some are asking whether the school should have remained open after earlier, smaller, quakes were felt – when others in the area were closed. Italy has declared a state of emergency to ensure funding is swiftly available, and to allow the army to help in recovery operations in the Molise region, where some 3,000 people have lost their homes.

2 November 2002 – Italian rescuers have called off their desperate search for survivors after pulling the last bodies from a school reduced to rubble by an earthquake which killed 26 small children. But residents throughout the region in south-eastern Italy were on edge as fresh tremors toppled some damaged houses and injured three people, including one of the school rescue workers in San Giuliano di Puglia. Yesterday a strong quake measuring 5.3 on the Richter scale prompted police to call on people to evacuate the village to avoid more danger. Rescue workers, who had managed to pull out 35 people alive, mostly children, from the collapsed school, were still picking through the wreckage when the second quake struck yesterday. The quakes left at least 3,000 people in the area homeless. Witnesses said the latest tremor shook the whole town of San Giuliano di Puglia, toppling at least one already damaged building and sending panicked residents into the streets. In nearby Castellino del Biferno, the bell-tower and part of the roof of a church collapsed.

2 November 2002 – Italian prosecutors have opened an investigation to determine why a school was reduced to rubble in an earthquake, wiping out most of a town’s six- and seven-year-old children. Tremors of up to 3.7 on the Richter scale shook buildings today around the medieval town of San Giuliano di Puglia, where the quake smashed the Francesco lovine primary school on Thursday (31 October), killing 26 children and a teacher, the prime minister’s office said. One tremor jolted north-eastern Italy. Aerial shots of the farming town showed many buildings in the centre, some of them hundreds of years old, were damaged. Only the school collapsed. Some 60 children were in the school when the quake struck, but rescue workers managed to pull out 35 people alive. “We have nothing to say that could point the finger of blame”, Andrea Cataldi, a lawyer in the public prosecutor’s office of the nearby town of Larino said during a visit to San Giuliano di Puglia. Building regulations were looser in the 1950s, when the school was built, although the region was prone to earthquakes. Some experts said the school’s walls were not strong enough to carry the weight of the heavy concrete in the roof and in the walls of new classrooms added on later to the second storey. Two elderly women were crushed to death elsewhere in the town of 1,200, and at least 3,000 people in the region were made homeless by the quake and a further strong tremor yesterday. Corriere della Sera daily reported that the national earthquake service had drawn up a report in 1998 reclassifying quake risks and saying the area around San Giuliano di Puglia was threatened, but that no measures had been taken as a result. Some 850 residents of the town spent the night in a hillside tent camp a mile and a half from their homes, after authorities said the buildings, cracked and shaken by the quake and several aftershocks, were unsafe. One policeman said he did not expect residents to be allowed home until at least tomorrow as fire-fighters inspected damage to buildings because of fears of further aftershocks. The government announced plans to hold an extraordinary cabinet meeting tomorrow morning and said it would announce measures to aid the quake-hit areas of Molise and Sicily.

4 November 2002 – Aftershocks rocked southern Italy today, causing no serious injuries but prompting more people to flee their homes a day after grieving families buried 26 schoolchildren killed by an earthquake last week. Officials said the tremors ranged between 3.5 and 4.2 on the Richter scale and hit at the heart of the Molise region where thousands were made homeless by last Thursday’s (31 October) quake. A number of homes in the cold, rain-drenched region had been damaged by the tremors and some people had fled or been evacuated, pushing the number of homeless to more than 6,000 from 30 different towns and villages, the officials said.

21 November 2002 – Pakistan

An earthquake rattled a remote mountainous region of northern Pakistan today, killing at least 20 people, a government official said. The magnitude 5.5 quake hit the Gilgit region, about 240 miles north of Peshawar, before dawn, and aftershocks rumbled through the region for several hours, said Jehangir Khan, an official with the government’s Ministry of Kashmiri Affairs in Islamabad. The epicentre of the earthquake was in the Himalayan province of Kashmir, Pakistan’s Meteorological Department said. At least four villages in the Astore valley were hit by the quake, which sent people fleeing from the houses as they crumbled. “We are expecting the casualties may rise,” Khan said. He said he did not have a count of injured.

22 November 2002 – Army helicopters delivered tents and blankets today to thousands left homeless in near-freezing temperatures after a deadly earthquake rattled a remote region of northern Pakistan. The pre-dawn quake yesterday hit the Gilgit region in the Himalayan foothills, killing at least 25 people, including 14 children. Most of the homes in a five-village area were damaged or destroyed, affecting as many as 11,000 people. The initial tremor registered 5.8, and aftershocks continued today. Thousands of villagers were too scared to return to their crumbling homes, officials said. “Thousands of people are living in the open sky due to the fears of quakes”, said Arbab Shahrukh, a local government official. “The aftershocks continued shaking houses even today.” The quake cut off roadways leading into the Astore Valley, the worst-affected region, hampering relief efforts. Army engineers were trying to clear a path to the villages. The Red Crescent Society of Pakistan, the Muslim equivalent of the Red Cross, said it sent three C-130 transport aircraft to Gilgit today, a regional centre about 240 miles north of Peshawar. The aircraft were stocked with 500 tents, 4,000 blankets, warm socks and other supplies. MI-17 military helicopters were ferrying the aid, along with food and medical supplies, to the victims. Information Minister Nisar Memon, who visited the area by helicopter today, said many of the people killed were crushed when their houses collapsed as they slept. Dozens of people were injured, though the exact number was not known, he said. The death toll could still rise, officials warned.

27 November 2002 – Aftershocks and blocked roads are hampering efforts to help up to 15,000 people forced to sleep out in freezing temperatures in Pakistan’s north following a major earthquake that killed 23 people last week. Government officials and aid workers said today that all aid, including tents, medicines, clothes and blankets, had to be airlifted on military helicopters to the affected villages because there was still no road access. More than 100 aftershocks have rocked the scenic mountainous region since last Thursday’s (21 November) quake. Four were recorded in the last 24 hours, of which two were about 4.0 on the Richter scale. Gilgit, the main town in the region about 155 miles north of Islamabad, was facing shortage of fuel and some food items because of the closure of the Karakorum Highway, which was not damaged by the quake but has been blocked by landslides.