Italy Earthquake 2012: Death Toll Rises To 17

Source The Telegraph An earthquake killed at least 15 people in northern Italy, damaging buildings and spreading panic among thousands of residents still living in tents after a tremor in the same region destroyed their homes just over a week ago. Picture: EPA/MAURIZIO DEGL'INNOCENTI
 ------------------------------------------------------------- Officials said several people were trapped under the rubble of houses and warehouses in the Emilia- Romagna region, where several building sites and workshops had just reopened after the previous quake on May 20. Picture: Pierre Teyssot/AFP/GettyImages

 --------------------------------------------------------------- Civil protection officials said 15 people were confirmed dead. Seven people were killed in the May 20 quake that, like Tuesday's, had its epicentre not far from the city of Modena.
------------------------------------------------------------- The 5.8-magnitude quake was felt across northern and central Italy, including in the most populous northern city Milan. The area was hit by several large aftershocks, one of 5.6 magnitude. Picture: Luca Bruno/AP
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Several victims were workers crushed when factories collapsed, while a parish priest in the town of Rovereto di Novi was killed by a falling beam, reportedly after he went back into his church to save a Madonna statue. Picture: Marco Vasini/AP ------------------------------------------------------------------- Firemen carry a coffin in MirandolaPicture: EPA/CARLO FERRARO
--------------------------------------------- Muslim workers pray after colleagues were killed during an earthquake at a factory in MirandolaPicture: ALBERTO LINGRIA/AFP/GettyImages
-------------------------------------------------- A drawing is seen on a wall inside a destroyed house in CavezzoPicture: Marco Vasini/Ap                                                     ----------------------------------------------- People walk past a collapsed building, after an earthquake, in CavezzoPicture: REUTERS/Giorgio Benvenuti                                  --------------------------------------------------- A damaged building is seen in Cavezzo, near ModenaPicture: REUTERS/Giorgio Benvenuti                                                              ------------------------------------------ An earthquake-damaged building is seen in CavezzoPicture: ALBERTO LINGRIA/AFP/GettyImages                                       ---------------------------------------------------------- A woman is comforted by policemen in MirandolaPicture: Pierre Teyssot/AFP/GettyImages                                                                       -------------------------------------- An Italian policeman helps a woman and her baby during an earth tremor in MirandolaPicture: Marco Vasini/AP                                                                         ---------------------------------------------- People are evacuated from their homes in MirandolaPicture: Marco Vasini/AP                                                                  ---------------------------------------------- People wait outside a hospital after an earthquake in Crevalcore near ModenaPicture: REUTERS/Giorgio Benvenuti                              ------------------------------------------------------ Rescue workers attend to an injured person in MirandolaPicture: Pierre Teyssot/AFP/GettyImages                                             --------------------------------------------------- Mr Borghi, who lost his son in the building, embraces his wife in front of the destroyed BBG industrial mouldings factory in MirandolaPicture: Luca Bruno/AP                                           ------------------------------------------------- A man walks in front of a collapsed church in MirandolaPicture: Marco Vasini/AP                       ----------------------------------------------- The collapsed San Francesco church is seen in MirandolaPicture: Luca Bruno/AP                                               ---------------------------------------------- The church of San Giacomo Roncole in Mirandola is damaged after an earthquakePicture: Pierre Teyssot/AFP/GettyImages                                                           --------------------------------------------- A firefighter stands next to a damaged warehouse in MedollePicture: REUTERS/Alessandro Garofalo                                    ---------------------------------------- A man looks at a collapsed farm in CamposantoPicture: Luca Bruno/AP                                         ---------------------------------------------------------- Firefighters are seen amidst rubble as they search for missing people at the Emotronic factory in MedollePicture: EPA/ELISABETTA BARACCHI                                                       ---------------------------------------------------------- The cathedral clock lies in a pile of rubble after an earthquake in MirandolaPicture: EPA/DANIEL DAL ZENNARO                                        --------------------------------------------- A large ornament which made up part of the Voto Church is seen after it fell from the church in ModenaPicture: EPA/ELISABETTA BARACCHI ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Death toll from Italy earthquake rises EARTHQUAKE May 30, 2012 Source : CNN

 
 The death toll from a 5.8-magnitude earthquake in northern Italy rose to 17 after the discovery of another body, officials said Wednesday, as questions were asked about why factory buildings collapsed. The latest body was found in the rubble of the collapsed factory in the area of Medolla, Italy's civil protection agency said. The prosecutor's office in the province of Modena, where the quake was centered, opened an investigation Wednesday into the cause of death of the quake victims, many of whom were factory workersInvestigators will examine how the factories were built and why they couldn't withstand an earthquake of Tuesday's magnitude. Modena's chief prosecutor, Vito Zincani, told CNN that as modern buildings, they should have remained standing. Most of the modern structures in the area were not damaged, he said, so the fact that some factories collapsed "shows an anomaly that needs investigation." Look at high-resolution images of the disaster The earthquake, which forced thousands of people from their homes, came nine days after a 6.0- magnitude quake struck the same region, killing seven people. Tuesday's quake, which struck at about 9 a .m. local when many people had begun work, was followed by dozens of aftershocks. The U.S. Geological Survey recorded one of 5.6 magnitude. Italian ministers met Wednesday morning and decided on several measures to be taken in the aftermath of the quake. The government declared a state of emergency in the quake area and set June 4 as a national day of mourning, according to a press statement. An extra two-cent tax will also be added to gasoline to help finance the recovery effort, it said. Italy's President Giorgio Napolitano, Prime Minister Mario Monti and the speakers of both Italian houses of parliament on the earthquake met later Wednesday at the presidential palace in Rome to discuss the disaster. The towns of Mirandola and Cavezzo, northwest of the city of Bologna, were closest to the epicenter, civil protection authorities said. Witnesses reported on Twitter that Cavezzo was about 70% destroyed. Pictures purportedly from the town, as well as a video stream from Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, show damaged and destroyed buildings. Churches and historic structures were among the affected buildings. In the small town of Novi di Modena, a 65-year-old priest died inside his church as he tried to save its statue of the Madonna. ------------------------------------- ROME — Earthquakes in Italy, like the twin temblors that claimed 24 lives this month in northern Italy, trigger a sense of terror and dread but also deja vu. Again and again, buildings both ancient and new cave in or topple when rocked by quakes that, while strong, aren't so powerful that they should devastate structures built to meet seismic-safety standards or retrofitted to render them resilient, especially in a relatively affluent country like Italy, one of the most-earthquake prone places in the world. That's precisely the problem, geologists and engineers said Wednesday, a day after a 5.8 magnitude quake collapsed churches, factories, apartment houses and barns in the Emilia Romagna area north of Bologna. As a 2008 report by geologists and civil protection experts found, the vast majority of buildings still don't meet modern seismic safety standards. Many of the victims in Tuesday's quake, as well as in a more powerful 6.0 temblor in practically the same area on May 20, were workers crushed in the rubble of relatively new warehouses or factories dotting the countryside of one of Italy's most industrially and agriculturally productive regions. The body of the 17th and last victim in Tuesday's quake was removed from a factory's rubble on Wednesday in the town of Medolla. Three other workers died in the same collapse. In 2009, when a 6.3 magnitude temblor rocked the central mountain town of L'Aquila, apartment houses pancaked, church steeples topped, a college dormitory crumbled and a hospital was left largely unusable. Even the government headquarters that should have been helping to coordinate rescue efforts fell down. "We're seeing the same movie over and over again," said geologist Gian Vito Graziano, who is president of Italy's National Geologists Council. In Japan last week, a 6.1 magnitude struck but did no significant damage, he noted. By way of comparison, in the Emilia Romagna quakes packing lesser punch, roofs and walls of modern factories and warehouses as well as ancient churches caved in. The quake "danger had been underestimated," Graziano said in a phone interview. "That the (ancient) towers fell, you can in some way understand," but the modern structures should not have collapsed, "absolutely not," he added. The college dormitory in L'Aquila, for example, was only a few decades old. And the hospital, rendered unsafe by the 2009 quake, had been built after Italy adopted more stringent construction standards for quake-prone areas following the deadly 1980 temblor that hit Naples. Another quake disaster, the collapse of a school in southern Puglia in 2002, also led to tighter building rules. Investigators examining that wreckage alleged that shoddy construction factored in the tragedy, which claimed 28 lives, including a small town's entire first grade. But Graziano said he didn't think cheap construction techniques were factors in most of Italy's quake disasters, including in Emilia Romagna. Rather, builders might not have been aware of the "amplifying effect" that the sandy soil not far under the surface might have had on the quake's effect along the fault line as it nears the earth's crust, he said. In some towns, a sandy muck oozed out of quake-caused fissures in the streets. Another geologist, Vittorio d'Oriano, said he subscribes to the school of thought that just about all of Italy is at high risk for quakes. "There is a strong debate: Is all of Italy at risk, more or less at risk?" d'Oriano said. Or are some parts, like Emilia Romagna was thought to be before these two quakes, of "low-medium risk?" This month's tragedy proves that the latter thinking "was an error," he said. Another mistake, d'Oriano said, is thinking that anti-seismic measures add onerously to building costs. "At most, this costs an additional 5 to 10 percent," said d'Oriano, who is based in Florence, Tuscany, a high-risk zone where builders now routine employ anti-seismic measures. He noted that while such measures for modern construction are not that costly, their price rises steeply when shoring up ancient monuments. Although corruption could affect the quality of materials used in public buildings by constructors who won bids, d'Oriano contended it was virtually "unthinkable" that private constructors, like those of the industrial buildings which collapsed in Emilia Romagna, would resort to corruption. "In the private sector, it's extremely rare," he said. As in the 2008 report, geologists this week noted that the country lags far behind industrial nations in applying anti-seismic techniques to construction in quake-vulnerable areas. Retrofitting, for example, generally "hasn't been done," despite a recommendation by the geologists' council, Graziano said, that all buildings be checked for quake-survivability. "Public buildings, like schools, have started doing it, but they are doing it slowly for lack of funds." Italy's economic crisis has slashed funding in general, but Graziano contended that Italians' fatalism, not funding shortalls, is the real problem. "We have an extraordinary capacity to react immediately, a second after," natural disasters, the geologist said, citing the "mud angels" who rushed into places like Genoa last year to help when flooding ravaged the city, or in Florence in 1966, when the Arno river overran its banks. "But as soon as the emergency is over, we forget it." source :The Huffington Post