ITALY: At least four children and two adults in the little village of San Giuliano di Puglia, in the Molise region of southern Italy, were killed yesterday in the aftermath of a severe earthquake.
That provisional death toll, however, last night seemed certain to rise as rescue workers fought a desperate battle against time in order to save more than 25 children trapped under the rubble of their collapsed school in San Giuliano di Puglia.
The earthquake, which measured 5.4 on the Richter scale, struck at about 11.40 yesterday morning, making itself felt in places as far apart as Naples in Campana and Foggia in Puglia. Although the earthquake caused both widespread alarm and extensive structural damage in villages throughout the Molise region, it was San Giuliano di Puglia which paid the heaviest toll when its schoolhouse, built in 1953, collapsed like a pack of cards.
At the time of the earthquake, approximately 60 people - 50 children, eight teachers and two janitors - were believed to have been in the school. Although the school caters for more than 100 pupils ranging in age from three to 13, many of the older children had a lucky escape, since they had been allowed out early in anticipation of today's public holiday in Italy.
Given the almost totally collapsed state of the school, yesterday's rescue work proved extremely difficult.
Such was the fragile state of the collapsed building that workers were obliged to remove the rubble by hand since heavy machinery might have endangered the lives of those trapped below.
Almost immediately, however, bulldozers and diggers were brought into action not to dig amongst the rubble but rather to prop up the remains of the building, making it stable enough for rescue work to proceed. At first, rescue workers were helped by the fact that they could hear the cries for help from the trapped children.
When the children could no longer be heard, sniffer dogs were introduced in order to identify their location during a rescue operation that last night was proceeding by floodlight. Remarkably, 31 children were pulled alive out of the rubble, with several suffering from arm and leg fractures but not from life-threatening injuries.
Yesterday's earthquake comes at the end of a week when eruptions and a subsequent earthquake at Mount Etna, near Catania in Sicily (without loss of life) have dominated news headlines. Experts at the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology have, however, ruled out any connection between the two events.
Likewise, vulcanologists dismissed the notion that yesterday's earthquake could in any way have been predicted, notwithstanding minor tremors registered in the area during Wednesday night.
Mr Enzo Boschi, President of the Institute of Geophysics, last night told state television: "If we advised people to abandon their homes every time we register a minor tremor in Italy, then the country would soon be deserted. The institute simply cannot predict earthquakes like this."
The fact that the 1953-built schoolhouse collapsed while many much older buildings in the medieval village of San Giuliano remained standing also prompted immediate polemics.
Officials at the Geophysics Institute pointed out that many local authorities had failed in their duty to carry out preventive, anti-seismic construction work on public buildings, called for in the wake of the 1980 Irpinia earthquake, near Naples.
As the polemics raged and the desperate rescue operation went ahead in San Giuliano di Puglia, hundreds of families in both the Molise region and from the village communities around Mount Etna were last night preparing to spend the night either in their cars or in tents provided by the Civil Protection service. For the time being, many of the buildings struck by the earthquakes both around Mount Etna and in the Molise region are not considered safe enough for habitation.