UPDATED: Major Earthquake in Italy
UPDATED AGAIN:
Floodlights are aiding rescuers sifting rubble for signs of life after the devastating Italian earthquake, while thousands face a night in shelters.
At least 150 people are dead, dozens missing, 1,500 injured and some 50,000 homeless after the pre-dawn quake struck L’Aquila and its region.
Emergency crews have reportedly pulled 60 people alive from the rubble.
Survivors are being housed in hotels or a tent city which has been erected in the medieval hill city.
Many houses have been reduced to piles of rubble, dotted with crushed cars.
The Lede Blog of the New York Times: Earthquake Warning Was Removed From Internet
Update | 1:06 p.m. A local news Web site in the region where the earthquake struck on Monday, Il Capoluogo d’Abruzzo, reports that Giampaolo Giuliani, who claims to have predicted the earthquake by measuring radon gas, wants a public apology from the authorities for ignoring his warning. The Italian news agency ANSA reports that other scientists think Mr. Giuliani’s radon gas method of earthquake prediction is not as accurate as he claims.
In 1995, The Times reported that changes in radon gas levels “do not precede all earthquakes and cannot be used as a basis for issuing warnings to the public.” We just added more information to the post below based on an interview with Ross Stein of the United States Geological Survey, who called radon gas measurement one in a series of “great white hopes” for earthquake prediction that has been cast aside by most scientists.
UPDATE via Jerusalem Post: Israeli medical student missing after quake
BBC: Italy hunts for quake survivors
A desperate search for survivors is on in the mountain city of L’Aquila in central Italy after a quake killed at least 91 people and injured 1,500.
Some 5,000 rescuers are picking through rubble in the walled medieval city and nearby towns and villages, some of them said to have been virtually destroyed.
Tents are being put up in tennis courts and on football pitches to house some of the 30,000-40,000 homeless.
Rescuers search the rubble from the Italian earthquake which is said to have flattened whole towns, killing at least 90 people.
Clearing rubble with bare hands
‘The walls were caving in’
Fear as another tremor hits
Rescuer: ‘Complicated’ operation
In pictures: Italy earthquake
Italy lives with quake threat
