Town hall flag at half mast for Italian natural disaster victims

The natural disaster struck so suddenly, and the first shock was felt across central Italy from Rome and Naples to Puglia at the end of the peninsula, but the hardest hit were in the hilltop towns near the epicentre – Pescara del Tronto, Amatrice further west, and Accumoli near Rieti.

“You can hear something under here. Quiet, quiet”, one rescue worker says.

Several churches and other medieval-era buildings were damaged or destroyed in the 6-magnitude quake that struck central Italy.

With heavy lifting equipment just starting to reach isolated villages and towns that were cut off by landslides and building debris, people used tractors, farm equipment and simple hand tools to break through what was left of old stone villas.

On January 13, 1915, a magnitude 6.7 quake near Avezzano killed approximately 32,000 people. The hardest-hit towns were Amatrice and Accumoli near Rieti, about 80 miles northeast of Rome.

Late on Wednesday there were cheers in the village of Pescara del Tronto when a young girl was pulled alive from the rubble after being trapped for 17 hours.

“The child was fine, scared but unharmed”.

Pope Francis led prayers for the dead and missing, saying: ‘Hearing the mayor of Amatrice say that the town no longer exists and hearing that there are children among the victims, I am deeply saddened’.

Two women ran up the street yelling “She’s alive!”

In the early part of the quake, she told the BBC, the nuns took refuge by heading under a table.

Another investigation was opened into why Amatrice’s school had collapsed, despite the fact it had only opened in 2012 and was meant to have been earthquake-proof.

It reported that when police entered the premises where Bravo lived on Thursday, he remained true to his training and growled to fend them off.

The girl, later identified as 8-year-old Giorgia, was finally pulled out with great care to a rousing cheer.

VIDEO: Amatrice residents search rubble for belongingsThe civil protection agency set up tent cities around the affected towns to accommodate the homeless, 1,200 of whom took advantage of the offer to spend the night, civil protection officials said Thursday.

“On the way out, we saw a pretty big chandelier swaying from side to side and I think that’s when we knew for sure”, Gilroy added.

“People like myself have lost everything, but at the same time the fact that we have survived means we have to move forward one minute at a time”, said Alessandra Cioni, 45, who managed to crawl out of her crumpled house after the quake.