L’Aquila a ‘ghost town’ as death toll passes 200

First reports from the epicentre of Italy's earthquake yesterday morning suggested less than a dozen people had died. Within 24 hours, the death toll had mounted to at least 200, while rescuers still scrabbled amid the ruins of L'Aquila this morning to find 15 people reported missing.

Working under spotlights in driving rain, emergency crews worked through the night to find more survivors in what began to look like a ghost town. But by dawn today there was little hope that anyone still buried in the rubble would survive.

As well as the dead, there are at least 1,000 people injured and nearly 20,000 made homeless. Many survivors spent their first night tents and cars. Others were taken by road to hotels on the Adriatic coast.

The earthquake, which measured 6.3 on the Richter scale, is reckoned to have destroyed between 3,000 and 10,000 buildings in the regional capital, L'Aquila. The medieval centre is devastated, with ancient churches and castles in ruins. "The damage is more serious than we can imagine," said Giuseppe Proietti, an official at the Ministry of Culture in Rome.

The death and damage is not confined to the city, however: nearby villages in the mountainous region of Abruzzo have also suffered. In Onna, the earthquake killed 24 of the tiny population of 300 people.

There were several aftershocks yesterday, forcing rescuers to pause in their work. One major tremor, late on Monday, lasted for around two seconds and made the ground feel like jelly, according to a BBC correspondent in L'Aquila.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has declared a state of emergency and says Italy has the resources to handle the disaster. But his government will have to answer questions about why warnings of the impending quake were not taken seriously.

Several resident reported increased tremors in the region in recent months, and earlier this year a researcher at the National Physical Laboratory, Giampaolo Giuliani, raised the alarm after sensors in the area of L'Aquila detected radon gas escaping from the ground.

Loudspeaker vans were despatched, urging residents of L'Aquila to evacuate their homes. But Giuliani was apparently reported to police for "spreading alarm" and forced to tone down his warning because other scientists claim there is no evidence that radon gas is a reliable indicator. Guido Bertolaso, head of Italy's civil protection agency, said on Monday: "There is no possibility of predicting an earthquake, that is the view of the international scientific community."