Italian earthquake death toll rises to 247

Thousands in Italy are left homeless as buildings are destroyed as rescue crews search for people trapped under the rubble after a 6.2 magnitude quake turns picturesque towns to ruins.

According to the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre, the epicentre was northeast of Rome, near Norcia in Umbria, and the US Geological Survey (USGS) put the magnitude at 6.2 .

 A 10-year-old girl covered in dust  legs poking out of the debris has been rescued from the rubble of the Italian earthquake –after being trapped upside down for 17 hours  from the ruins of a building in the town of Pescara del Tronto.

“The quake was so strong, it seemed at one point the bed was walking across the room by itself with us on it” said Lina Mercantini of Casali.

Several people also were reportedly killed in Pescara del Tronto, in the Marche region, to the east of the quake epicentre.

Alexandro Petrucci, the mayor of the village said Pescara was one of “two or three hamlets that have just completely disintegrated.”

In 2009, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck in L’Aquila, 55 miles south of the latest quake, killing over 300 people.

The Tyrrhenian Basin or Sea, which lies to the west of Italy, between the mainland and Sardinia, Corsica is slowly opening up. The Adriatic crust is rotating in an anti-clockwise direction and Italy is being pulled and pushed apart every which way.  The Apennines mountain chain is very high and the thick crust  generating a process of gravitational collapse  and therefore the normal faulting earthquakes, according to Dr Richard Walters from Durham University. These are not the colossal tremors we see at tectonic plate boundaries where a magnitude of 8 and 9 events  will occur.

“ The effects are so devastating here because the quakes happen so shallow in the crust which is a fault of nature” Leeds University Dr Laura Gregory  who works in the area explained.