The Jim Bakker Show

New earthquake rocks Italy, buildings collapse but no deaths reported

Coffins are seen in the collapsed cemetery of the village of Campi near Norcia, following an earthquake in central Italy,

By Isla Binnie

NORCIA, Italy (Reuters) – A powerful earthquake struck Italy on Sunday in the same central regions that have been rocked by repeated tremors over the past two months, with more homes and churches brought down but no deaths reported.

The quake, which measured 6.6 according to the U.S. Geological Survey, was bigger than one on Aug. 24 that killed almost 300 people. Many people have fled the area since then, helping to avoid a new devastating death toll.

With thousands already made homeless, a leading seismologist warned that the earthquakes could go on for weeks in a domino effect along the central Apennine fault system.

The latest quake was felt across much of Italy, striking at 7.40 a.m. (0640 GMT), its epicenter close to the historic Umbrian walled town of Norcia, some 100 km (60 miles) from the university city of Perugia.

Panicked Norcia residents rushed into the streets and the town’s ancient Basilica of St. Benedict collapsed, leaving just the facade standing. Nuns, monks and locals sank to their knees in the main square in silent prayer before the shattered church.

“This is a tragedy. It is a coup de grace. The basilica is devastated,” Bishop Renato Boccardo of Norcia told Reuters.

“Everyone has been suspended in a never-ending state of fear and stress. They are at their wits’ end,” said Boccardo, referring to the thousands of tremors that have rattled the area since August, including two serious quakes on Wednesday.

Italy’s Civil Protection unit, which coordinates disaster relief, said numerous houses were destroyed on Sunday in the regions of Umbria and Marche, but either they were deserted at the time or most of the residents managed to escape in time.

Civil Protection chief Fabrizio Curcio said no deaths had been reported and around 20 people were injured, none of them critically. He said it was too early to say how many more people had lost their homes.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi promised a massive reconstruction effort regardless of cost and took advantage of the disaster to resume his frequent criticism of the European Union’s public finance rules.

“We will rebuild everything, the houses, the churches and the businesses,” he told reporters. “Everything that needs to be done to rebuild these areas will be done.”

He said he would have “no regard for technocratic rules” and would consider all money spent to make Italy’s schools and hospitals earthquake-proof to be outside EU limits on budget deficits.

Local authorities said towns and villages already battered by August’s 6.2 quake had suffered further significant damage.

“This morning’s quake has hit the few things that were left standing. We will have to start from scratch,” Michele Franchi, the deputy mayor of Arquata del Tronto, told Rai television.

Experts said Sunday’s quake was the strongest here since a 6.9 quake in Italy’s south in 1980 that killed 2,735 people.

Firefighters take care of a woman following an earthquake in Norcia, Italy, October 30, 2016. REUTERS/Remo Casilli

ARTISTIC LOSS

The destruction of the Norcia basilica was the single most significant loss of Italy’s artistic heritage in an earthquake since a tremor in 1997 caused the collapse of the ceiling of the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi, which is 80 km to the north.

The frescoed basilica, which is the spiritual, historic and tourist heart of Norcia, was built over the site of the home where the founder of the Benedictine order and his Sister St. Scolastica were born in 480.

The basilica and monastery complex dates to the 13th century, although shrines to St. Benedict and his sister had been built there since the 8th century.

Benedict founded the Benedictine order in Subiaco, near Rome. He died in 530 in the monastery at Monte Cassino, south of Rome, which was destroyed during World War Two. That monastery was later rebuilt.

A number of other churches were also ruined on Sunday, Italian media reported, including Norcia’s Cattedrale di Santa Maria, which was built in the 16th century, while the town hall belltower had deep cracks running through its walls.

However, most of Norcia’s homes appeared to have withstood the prolonged tremor, with residents praising years of investment by local authorities in anti-seismic protection.

In the nearby city of Rieti, patients were evacuated from a hospital to allow experts to check on structural damage, while hillroads across the region were littered with fallen rocks.

Sunday’s earthquake was felt as far north as Bolzano, near the border with Austria and as far south as the Puglia region at the southern tip of the Italian peninsula.

It was also felt strongly in the capital, Rome, where transport authorities shut down the metro system for precautionary checks. Authorities also toured the city’s main Roman Catholic basilicas looking for possible damage.

Italy sits on two geological fault lines, making it one of the most seismically active countries in Europe.

Its deadliest quake since the start of the 20th century came in 1908, when a tremor followed by a tsunami killed an estimated 80,000 people in the southern regions of Reggio Calabria and Sicily.

(Writing by Crispian Balmer and Philip Pullella; Additional reporting by Steve Scherer, Gavin Jones and Mark Bendeich; Editing by Mark Heinrich, Larry King)

Washington state ‘grossly’ unprepared for major quake: report

(Reuters) – Washington state is grossly unprepared for a large earthquake and tsunami that may strike in the coming decades, putting it at risk for a humanitarian disaster, the Seattle Times reported on Sunday, citing a draft government report.

Anticipating a poor response to such a disaster, the state’s emergency managers will begin asking residents to stock enough food and other supplies to survive on their own for two weeks, the newspaper said.

The Pacific Northwest region was once thought to be a low risk for a massive earthquake, compared with its coastal neighbor California.

Researchers, however, have come to believe that an 8.0 to 9.0 magnitude temblor has shaken Oregon and Washington every 230 years or so. The last struck about 315 years ago, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, so one is overdue.

To prepare for that possibility, Washington officials organized a four-day exercise called “Cascadia Rising” in June, and the results were laid out in a draft report, the Seattle Times reported.

“The state’s current mindset and approach to disaster response is not suitable to a catastrophic scale incident,” the assessment says, according to a copy the newspaper published online.

The draft report recommends expanding the emergency authority of Washington’s governor and putting in place plans for mass sheltering and feeding, among other steps.

The state Emergency Management Division wants to spend $750,000 a year urging people to have emergency kits that would last up to two weeks, the Seattle Times said.

On the Olympic Peninsula, which is vulnerable to being cut off if roads and bridges are damaged, people may be on their own for twice that long, an official told the newspaper.

“What you have on hand when this occurs is how you’re going to survive,” said Clallam County emergency coordinator Penny Linterman.

(Reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Italy’s Renzi says August quake caused at least 4 billion euros of damage

Italian Prime Minister Renzi addresses the United Nations General Assembly in the Manhattan borough of New York

ROME, Sept 23 (Reuters) – An earthquake that killed 297 people in central Italy last month caused damage worth at least 4 billion euros ($4.5 billion), Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Friday.

Renzi, who is looking for as much fiscal leeway as possible from the European Commission as he prepares his 2017 budget, has said he expects earthquake-related costs to be excluded from the EU’s budget deficit limits.

However, he has remained vague on whether those costs should include only the immediate aid and reconstruction effort for the towns affected, or also costs related to a broader project to make Italy’s buildings more earthquake-resistant.

“We are looking at a minimum of 4 billion euros ($4.48 billion),” Renzi told reporters on Friday in his first estimate of the extent of the damage in the mountain towns hit by the Aug. 24 quake.

He said all money spent on making Italy’s schools earthquake proof would be excluded from EU’s Stability Pact which sets deficit ceilings for the bloc’s members. It remains to be seen whether the EU Commission will agree with this approach.

The government, which will publish new economic forecasts next week, is expected to sharply raise its target for the 2017 budget deficit from the current goal of 1.8 percent of gross domestic product.

Brussels says it has granted Italy “unprecedented” budget flexibility in recent years and is concerned about Rome’s inability to bring down its public debt, the highest in the euro zone after Greece’s as a percentage of GDP.

Renzi has insisted that the EU’S fiscal rules should be relaxed, and has attacked his fellow leaders for failing to
acknowledge that austerity policies have been counter productive.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Thursday Rome had already been given 19 billion euros of “flexibility” in its 2016 budget, in comments widely interpreted in Italy as a signal he may be reluctant to grant much more leeway for next year. ($1 = 0.8919 euros)

(Reporting By Gavin Jones; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Earthquake activity has put Oklahoma at the center of oil wastewater debate

By Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton

TULSA, Okla. (Reuters) – One of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded in Oklahoma rattled a state where seismic activity has become a growing concern and sent tremors that were felt in six neighboring states, the United States Geological Survey said on Saturday.

The quake, which struck 14 km (9 miles) northwest of Pawnee in north-central Oklahoma at 7:02 a.m. CDT (1302 GMT), had a magnitude of 5.6, matching in strength a temblor that hit the state in 2011, the USGS reported on its website. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

The earthquake, which had a depth of 6.6 km (4.1 miles), could offer fresh ammunition to environmentalists concerned about the side-effects of oil and gas production, which has been blamed for a spike in minor to moderate quakes in the region.

Pawnee Mayor Brad Sewell said the tremor lasted nearly a minute, far longer than previous ones that lasted only a second or two.

Part of the façade of an early 20th-century bank building had fallen into a downtown street, he said. The mayor told Reuters he had yet to survey other parts of town, which has about 2,200 residents.

“We have had a spate of quakes over the last several years, but nothing like this,” he said. “It was a long, sustained quake.”

Oklahoma geologists have documented strong links between increased seismic activity in the state and the injection into the ground of wastewater from oil and gas production, according to a report from a state agency last year.

Oklahoma is recording 2-1/2 earthquakes daily of a magnitude 3 or greater, a seismicity rate 600 times greater than before 2008, the Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS) said.

Last year the state recorded 585 quakes of magnitude 3 or greater, up sharply from 109 in 2013. Prior to 2008, Oklahoma averaged less than two a year.

The spike in earthquake activity has put Oklahoma at the center of a national debate over whether wastewater disposal from oil and gas production triggers earthquakes. The state’s economy depends heavily on energy production, accounting for one of every four jobs there.

The water at issue is extracted from the ground along with oil and gas, separated and re-injected into deep wells.

The drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” generates large amounts of wastewater. But the OGS report said fracking is responsible for only a small percentage of the total volume of wastewater injected into disposal wells.

Zachary Reeves, a seismologist with the USGS National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado, said the agency had received reports of the Oklahoma quake from South Dakota, Wisconsin, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and Texas.

“It’s a relatively large quake for the area. The central U.S. doesn’t tend to get a lot of five-plus earthquakes.”

He said it was the third magnitude 5 quake in the state since 2011, and there were a couple of dozen or so 4s or bigger in Oklahoma last year.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Writing by Frank McGurty; Editing by James Dalgleish)

5.6 Earthquake Felt in six states shakes Midwest this morning

By Kami Klein

According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) , a 5.6 earthquake rocked Pawnee, Oklahoma awake this morning,and from all reports is the largest quakes to hit Oklahoma. No casualties or damage has been reported at this time.

Posts soon after the event, from news media, facebook and twitter report the quake was also felt in Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, Illinois and Kansas. An earthquake of comparable size last occurred in Oklahoma in about the same area in 2011 as well as a 5.1 earthquake on February 13, 2016.

The center of the quake occurred about 9 miles northwest of Pawnee, which has a population of about 2,200. and 70 miles northeast of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Several aftershocks have followed ranging from magnitude 2.9 to 3.5 and the USGS is expecting more to occur.

This will most likely continue more in depth controversy on the practice of disposing oil and gas field wastewater deep underground. Oklahoma, a key energy producing state now rivals California in seismic events.

So far this year the state has felt 2,503 earthquakes in 2016. A statement on the USGS website states that without studying the specifics of the wastewater injection and oil and gas production in this area, they cannot conclude whether or not this particular earthquake was caused by industrial-related human activities. They will continue to process seismic data in the following days and weeks that will help answer this question.

Italy quake death toll hits 267, state funeral planned

A drone photo shows the damages following an earthquake in Pescara del Tronto, central Italy, August 25

By Steve Scherer and Gabriele Pileri

PESCARA DEL TRONTO, Italy (Reuters) – Hopes of finding more survivors faded on Friday three days after a powerful earthquake hit central Italy, with the death toll rising to 267 and the rescue operation in some of the stricken areas called off.

Sniffer dogs and emergency crews continued to scour piles of rubble in Amatrice, a picturesque town popular with tourists which was leveled by Wednesday’s quake and where 207 bodies have been retrieved so far.

Mayor Sergio Pirozzi said around 15 people, including some children and the local baker, had not been accounted for. “Only a miracle can bring our friends back alive from the rubble, but we are still digging because many are missing,” he told reporters.

In nearby villages, such as Pescara del Tronto, rescuers pulled out after all the missing had been accounted for.

Italy plans to hold a state funeral for around 40 of the victims on Saturday, which will be held in the nearby city of Ascoli Piceno.

A day of national mourning was announced, with flags due to fly at half mast around the country for the dead, who include a number of foreigners.

The civil protection department in Rome said nearly 400 people were being treated for injuries in hospitals, and 40 of them were in critical condition. An estimated 2,500 people were left homeless by the most deadly quake in Italy since 2009.

Survivors with nowhere else to go are sleeping in neat rows of blue tents set up by emergency services close to their flattened communities. The government has promised to rebuild the region, but some local people feared that would never happen.

“I’m afraid our village and others like it will just die. Most people don’t live here year round anyway. In the winter time the towns are virtually empty,” said Salvatore Petrucci, 77, who lived in the nearby small village of Trisunga.

“We may be the last ones to have lived in Trisunga,” he said.

More than 920 aftershocks have hit the area since the original 6.2 magnitude quake struck early Wednesday. By Friday, most of the outlying communities were quiet and empty, buildings lying in crumpled mounds, the innards of private homes exposed to the skies and belongings scattered in the debris.

“We have removed the last bodies that we knew about,” said Paolo Cortelli, a member of the Alpine Rescue national service who helped to recover about 30 bodies from Pescara del Tronto.

“We don’t know, and we might never know, if the number of missing that we knew about actually corresponds to the people who were actually under the rubble.”

The foreigners who died in the disaster included six Romanians, a Spanish woman, a Canadian and an Albanian. The British embassy in Rome declined to comment on reports that three Britons, including a 14-year-old boy had died.

The area is popular with holidaymakers and local authorities were struggling to pin down how many visitors were present when the quake hit.

The Romanian Foreign Ministry said 17 Romanians were still missing. Italy has a large Romanian community, and some of the victims were resident in the country.

FUNERAL

The first funeral of a victim was held in Rome on Friday, for Marco Santarelli, the 28-year-old son of a senior state official, who died in the family’s holiday home in Amatrice.

“I cannot find the words to describe the grief of a father who outlives his own children. Perhaps there are no words,” Marco’s father, Filippo Santarelli, told Corriere della Sera newspaper.

Hardly a single building was left unscathed in Amatrice, which was last year voted one of the most beautiful old towns in Italy and is famous for its local cuisine.

“Amatrice will have to be razed to the ground,” said mayor Pirozzi, who urged youngsters not to leave the area, saying that would mean the end of their community. “No night can last so long that the sun never rises again. I am convinced that Amatrice will rise again. We owe it to the 207 people who died here.”

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has declared a state of emergency for the region, allowing the government to release an immediate 50 million euros ($56 million) for the relief work.

He has promised to rebuild the shattered homes and said he would also renew efforts to bolster Italy’s flimsy defenses against earthquakes that regularly batter the country.

“We want those communities to have the chance of a future and not just memories,” he told reporters in Rome on Thursday.

Italy has a poor record of rebuilding after quakes. About 8,300 people who were forced to leave their homes after a deadly earthquake in L’Aquila in 2009 are still living in temporary accommodation.

This latest disaster represents a major political challenge for Renzi, who has been in office for two years. Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was widely criticized for what was perceived to be a botched response to the L’Aquila calamity.

Renzi declined to predict when the homeless might be rehoused. “This is not about setting challenges and making promises. We need the pace of a marathon runner,” he said.

Most of the buildings in the area were built hundreds of years ago, long before any anti-seismic building norms were introduced, helping to explain the widespread destruction.

Cultural Minister Dario Franceschini said all 293 culturally important sites, many of them churches, had either collapsed or been seriously damaged.

Italy sits on two fault lines, making it one of the most seismically active countries in Europe. Almost 30 people died in earthquakes in northern Italy in 2012 while more than 300 died in the L’Aquila disaster.

($1 = 0.8857 euros)

(Writing by Crispian Balmer and Philip Pullella, editing by David Stamp)

Italy quake death toll nears 250 as rescuers search demolished towns

Rescuers work at a collapsed building following an earthquake in Amatrice

By Steve Scherer and Gabriele Pileri

AMATRICE, Italy (Reuters) – The death toll from a devastating earthquake in central Italy reached at least 241 people on Thursday and could rise further after rescue teams worked through the night to try to find survivors under the rubble of flattened towns.

The 6.2 magnitude quake struck a cluster of mountain communities 140 km (85 miles) east of Rome early on Wednesday as people slept, destroying hundreds of homes.

The Civil Protection department officially revised the death toll down to 241 from a previous 247 given earlier on Thursday morning.

Officials said they expected to confirm more deaths as the search operation continued. Trucks full of rubble left the area every few minutes, including one in which a dusty doll could be seen lying on top of tonnes of debris.

On Thursday, the sun rose on frightened people who had slept in cars or tents, the earth continuing to tremble under their feet from aftershocks, hundreds of which have struck since the quake. Two registered 5.1 and 5.4, just before dawn.

“I haven’t slept much because I was really afraid,” said 70-year-old Arturo Onesi from the town of Arquata del Tronto, who spent the night in a tent camp for survivors and rescue workers.

The earthquake was powerful enough to be felt in Bologna to the north and Naples to the south, both more than 220 km (135 miles) from the epicenter.

Many of those killed or injured were holidaymakers in the four worst-hit towns – Amatrice, Pescara del Tronto, Arquata del Tronto and Accumoli – where populations increase by up to tenfold in the summer. That makes it harder to track the deaths.

One Spaniard, five Romanians, and a number of other foreigners, some of them care-givers for the elderly, were believed to be among the dead, officials said.

Aerial video taken by drones showed swathes of Amatrice, last year voted one of Italy’s most beautiful historic towns, completely flattened. The town, known across Italy and beyond for a local pasta dish, had been filling up for the 50th edition of a popular food festival this weekend.

The mayor said the bodies of 15-20 tourists were believed to be under the rubble of the Hotel Roma, which he said had about 32 guests when it collapsed on Wednesday morning.

GIRL FOUND ALIVE

About 270 people injured in Wednesday’s quake were hospitalized, the Civil Protection department said, adding that about 5,000 people, including police, firefighters, army troops and volunteers, were involved in post-quake operations.

Rescuers working with emergency lighting in the darkness saved a 10-year-old girl, pulling her alive from the rubble where she had lain for about 15 hours.

Many other children were not so lucky. A family of four, including two boys aged 8 months and 9 years, were buried when a church bell tower toppled into their house in nearby Accumoli.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s cabinet was meeting on Thursday to decide emergency measures to help the affected communities.

“Today is a day for tears, tomorrow we can talk of reconstruction,” he told reporters late on Wednesday.

The death toll appeared likely to rival or surpass that from the last major earthquake to strike Italy, which killed more than 300 people in the central city of L’Aquila in 2009.

While hopes of finding more people alive diminished by the hour, firefighters’ spokesman Luca Cari recalled that survivors were found in L’Aquila up to 72 hours after that quake.

Most of the damage was in the Lazio and Marche regions, with Lazio bearing the brunt of the damage and the biggest toll. Neighboring Umbria was also affected. All three regions are dotted with centuries-old buildings susceptible to earthquakes.

Italy sits on two fault lines, making it one of the most seismically active countries in Europe.

The country’s most deadly earthquake since the start of the 20th century came in 1908, when an earthquake followed by a tsunami killed an estimated 80,000 people in the southern regions of Reggio Calabria and Sicily.

(Additional reporting by Antonella Cinelli, Giulia Segreti and Roberto Mignucci; Writing by Philip Pullella; Editing by Pravin Char and Peter Graff)

At least 120 killed as quake flattens towns in central Italy

By Steve Scherer

ACCUMOLI, Italy (Reuters) – An earthquake flattened towns in central Italy in the early hours of Wednesday, killing at least 120 people and burying some alive in their sleep, with volunteers and firefighters racing to free those trapped under mounds of rubble as darkness fell.

The quake razed mountain homes and buckled roads in a cluster of communities some 140 km (85 miles) east of Rome. It was powerful enough to be felt in Bologna to the north and Naples to the south, each more than 220 km from the epicenter.

“I was blown away by what I saw. We haven’t stopped digging all day,” said Marcello di Marco, 34, a farmer who traveled from the town of Narni some 100 km away to help with emergency services’ rescue efforts in the hamlet of Pescara del Tronto.

In the nearby village of Accumoli, a family of four, including two boys aged 8 months and 9 years, were buried when their house imploded.

As rescue workers carried away the body of the infant, carefully covered by a small blanket, the children’s grandmother blamed God: “He took them all at once,” she wailed.

The army was mobilized to help with special heavy equipment and the Treasury released 235 million euros ($265 million) of emergency funds. At the Vatican, Pope Francis dispatched part of the Holy See’s tiny firefighting force to help in the rescue.

Rescue workers used helicopters to pluck survivors to safety in more isolated villages cut off by landslides and rubble.

Aerial photographs showed whole areas of Amatrice, last year voted one of Italy’s most beautiful historic towns, flattened by the 6.2 magnitude quake. Many of those killed or missing were visitors.

“It’s all young people here, it’s holiday season, the town festival was to have been held the day after tomorrow so lots of people came for that,” said Amatrice resident Giancarlo, sitting in the road wearing just his underwear.

“It’s terrible, I’m 65 years old and I have never experienced anything like this, small tremors, yes, but nothing this big. This is a catastrophe,” he said.

Scores of people are believed unaccounted for, with the presence of the holidaymakers making it difficult to tally.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who gave the latest toll figure after visiting the area, called for national unity.

“We Italians are very good at arguing and being polemical but now let’s stand in solidarity and pride alongside those who are rescuing others,” he said. “Today is a day for tears. Tomorrow we can talk of reconstruction.”

VOICES UNDER THE RUBBLE

Patients at the badly damaged hospital in Amatrice were moved into the streets and a field hospital was set up.

“Three quarters of the town is not there anymore,” Amatrice mayor Sergio Pirozzi told state broadcaster RAI. “The aim now is to save as many lives as possible. There are voices under the rubble, we have to save the people there.”

Accumoli’s mayor, Stefano Petrucci, said some 2,500 people were left homeless in the local community of 17 hamlets.

Residents responding to wails muffled by tonnes of bricks and mortar sifted through with their bare hands before emergency services arrived with earth-moving equipment and sniffer dogs. Wide cracks had appeared like open wounds on the buildings that were still standing.

The national Civil Protection Department said some survivors would be put up elsewhere in central Italy, while others would be housed in tents that were being dispatched to the area.

Most of the damage was in the Lazio and Marche regions, with Lazio taking the brunt of the damage and the biggest toll. Neighboring Umbria was also affected. All three regions are dotted with centuries-old buildings susceptible to earthquakes.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake struck near the Umbrian city of Norcia. Italy’s earthquake institute INGV registered it at 6.0 and put the epicenter further south, closer to Accumoli and Amatrice.

It was relatively shallow at 4 km below the earth’s surface.

INGV reported 150 aftershocks in the 12 hours following the initial quake, the strongest measuring 5.5.

Residents of Rome were woken by the tremors, which rattled furniture, swayed lights and set off car alarms in most of central Italy.

“It was so strong. It seemed the bed was walking across the room by itself with us on it,” Lina Mercantini of Ceselli, Umbria, about 75 km away from the hardest hit area, told Reuters.

Italy sits on two fault lines, making it one of the most seismically active countries in Europe.

The last major earthquake to hit the country struck the central city of L’Aquila in 2009, killing more than 300 people.

The most deadly since the start of the 20th century came in 1908, when an earthquake followed by a tsunami killed an estimated 80,000 people in the southern regions of Reggio Calabria and Sicily.

(Additional reporting by Philip Pullella, Gavin Jones, Stephen Jewkes, Eleanor Biles and Giulia Segreti; Writing by Crispian Balmer and Philip Pullella; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Powerful Earthquake strikes Myanmar, at least 3 dead

Two men look at a collapsed entrance of a pagoda after an earthquake in Bagan

By Shwe Yee Saw Myint and Aung Hla Tun

YANGON (Reuters) – A powerful 6.8 magnitude earthquake shook central Myanmar on Wednesday, killing at least three people including two children, local officials said, and damaging some of the famous pagodas in the Southeast Asian nation’s ancient capital of Bagan.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake hit near the town of Chauk, southwest of Mandalay. Tremors were felt as far away as Thailand, where witnesses reported high rise buildings swaying in Bangkok, and the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka.

A fire department official from regional capital Magwe said two young girls were killed when a riverbank gave way in Yenanchaung township, south of Chauk.

One person was killed and another injured when a tobacco processing factory collapsed in the town of Pakkoku, to the north, the duty officer at the local fire department said.

There were no other confirmed casualties, and early reports suggested limited damage overall.

“My house shook during the quake. Many people were scared and they ran out of the buildings,” said Maung Maung Kyaw, a local official of the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party.

“Some of the old buildings have cracks. The biggest damage is to the bank building in the town. The damage to other buildings isn’t that significant.”

The quake struck at a relatively deep 84 km (52 miles), the USGS said.

Chauk is about 35 km (20 miles) from Bagan, known as the “City of 4 Million Pagodas” and a major draw for Myanmar’s nascent tourism industry.

Yangon-based travel agent Amy Saw, who had been in touch with her firm’s Bagan office, said some of the pagodas there had been damaged, and the Ministry of Religious Affairs put the number sustaining some kind of damage at 65.

According to the 2014 census, Chauk has a population of about 45,000, with around 185,000 living in the surrounding area. It was a thriving oilfield during the British colonial era.

“So far as we heard from our local staff, a three-storey building collapsed in Chauk and a pagoda was badly damaged in a Yenanchaung,” a fire department official in Magwe told Reuters.

Ko Tin Ko Lwin, a resident of Yenanchaung township, told Reuters that a pagoda that had been cracked before the quake had collapsed, while electricity poles and some trees were felled.

The quake shook buildings in Myanmar’s biggest city of Yangon and in other towns and cities, witnesses said.

Office buildings in the Thai capital Bangkok, to the east of Myanmar, shook for a few seconds, residents there said.

The quake was also felt in Bangladesh, to the west of Myanmar, where some people ran out into the street as buildings shook, residents said.

Myanmar is in a seismically active part of the world where the Indo-Australian Plate runs up against the Eurasian Plate.

In March, 2011, at least 74 people were killed in an earthquake in Myanmar near its borders with Thailand and Laos.

(This version of the story has been refiled to fix typo in headline)

(Reporting by Yangon and Bangkok bureaus; Writing by Robert Birsel and Antoni Slodkowski; Editing by Alex Richardson)

Powerful earthquake in Italy overnight, killing at least 73, thousands homeless

A man is carried away after having been rescued alive from the ruins following an earthquake in Amatrice

By Steve Scherer

ACCUMOLI, Italy (Reuters) – A powerful earthquake devastated a string of mountainous towns in central Italy on Wednesday, trapping residents under piles of rubble, killing at least 73 people and leaving thousands homeless.

The quake struck in the early hours of the morning when most residents were asleep, razing homes and buckling roads in a cluster of communities some 140 km (85 miles) east of Rome.

A family of four, including two boys aged 8 months and 9 years, were buried when their house in Accumoli imploded.

As rescue workers carried away the body of the infant, carefully covered by a small blanket, the children’s grandmother blamed God: “He took them all at once,” she wailed.

The army was mobilized to help with special heavy equipment and the treasury released 235 million euros ($265 million) of emergency funds. At the Vatican, Pope Francis canceled part of his general audience to pray for the victims.

Aerial photographs showed whole areas of Amatrice, voted last year as one of Italy’s most beautiful historic towns, flattened by the 6.2 magnitude quake.

“It’s terrible, I’m 65-years-old and I have never experienced anything like this, small tremors, yes, but nothing this big. This is a catastrophe,” he said.

Accumoli mayor Stefano Petrucci said some 2,500 were left homeless in the local community, which is made up of 17 hamlets.

Residents responding to wails muffled by tonnes of bricks and mortar sifted through the rubble with their bare hands before emergency services arrived with earth-moving equipment and sniffer dogs. Wide cracks had appeared like open wounds on the buildings that were still standing.

The national Civil Protection Department said some survivors would be put up elsewhere in central Italy, while others would be housed in tents that were being dispatched to the area.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said he would visit the disaster area later in the day: “No one will be left alone, no family, no community, no neighborhood. We must get down to work .. to restore hope to this area which has been so badly hit,” he said in a brief televised address.

The quake hit during the summer when the area, usually sparsely populated, hosts large numbers of holidaymakers.

A spokeswoman for the civil protection department, Immacolata Postiglione, said the dead were in Amatrice, Accumoli and other villages including Pescara del Tronto and Arquata del Tronto. She put the initial death toll at 73, but said rescue teams had only just reached some stricken areas.

The earthquake caused damage in three regions — Umbria, Lazio and Marche — and was felt as far away as the southern Italian port city of Naples.

DISAPPEARING IN DUST

The hospital in Amatrice was among the buildings that were badly damaged, and patients were moved into the streets.

RAI reported that two Afghan girls, believed to be asylum-seekers, were also missing in the town.

The U.S. Geological Survey, which measured the quake at 6.2 magnitude, said it struck near the Umbrian city of Norcia, while Italy’s earthquake institute INGV registered it at 6.0 and put the epicenter further south, closer to Accumoli and Amatrice.

The damage was made more severe because the epicenter was at a relatively shallow 4 km below the surface of the earth. Residents of Rome were woken by the tremors, which rattled furniture, swayed lights and set off car alarms in most of central Italy.

“It was so strong. It seemed the bed was walking across the room by itself with us on it,” Lina Mercantini of Ceselli, Umbria, about 75 km away from the hardest hit area, told Reuters. Olga Urbani, in the nearby town of Scheggino, said: “Dear God it was awful. The walls creaked and all the books fell off the shelves.”

INGV reported 60 aftershocks in the four hours following the initial quake, the strongest measuring 5.5.

Italy sits on two fault lines, making it one of the most seismically active countries in Europe.

The last major earthquake to hit the country struck the central city of L’Aquila in 2009, killing more than 300 people.

The most deadly since the start of the 20th century came in 1908, when an earthquake followed by a tsunami killed an estimated 80,000 people in the southern regions of Reggio Calabria and Sicily.

($1 = 0.8868 euros)

(Writing by Crispian Balmer and Philip Pullella, reporting by Steve Scherer, Philip Pullella, Stephen Jewkes, Eleanor Biles and Giulia Segreti.; Editing by Nick Macfie, Robert Birsel and Peter Graff)

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