One person has died and buildings were damaged after a powerful, 5.3 magnitude earthquake hit southern Italy in the middle of the night on Friday.
An 84-year-old man died of a heart attack when the quake struck the province of Cosenza in the southern region of Calabria, Italy.
The quake struck at 3.15am (0115 GMT), when most people were asleep in bed.
Many people spent the rest of the night outdoors, afraid to return to their
homes.
"I got up, it was the middle of the night, and ran out into the street.
Outside there were lots of people and there was rubble all over the ground,"
Vincenzo Alberti, who lives in Mormanno, told Corriere della Sera.
A hospital in the small town of Mormanno was evacuated after cracks emerged
and many homes were damaged.
As houses and apartment blocks trembled, people ran out in the streets in
terror.
"There was a lot of panic," Guglielmo Armentano, the mayor of Mormanno, told the Ansa news agency.
"In our historic centre, there are some damaged buildings. As a precaution we have evacuated the hospital," he said.
Old people's homes were evacuated in Mormanno and the nearby town of Laino Borgo and Mormanno's cathedral was closed as a precaution after cracks appeared in its facade. The bell tower of a church in Santa Maria della Consolazione was also damaged.
The Italian Geophysics Institute said on its website that the quake was followed by at least 14 other tremors.
Emergency services are checking the extent of the damage.
The quake comes five days after a controversial court case in which six scientists and a senior public official were sentenced to six years in jail after being found guilty of not giving adequate warning of the huge earthquake which hit the central mountain region of Abruzzo in April, 2009.
The experts were tried by a court in L'Aquila, the city which bore the brunt of the quake, which claimed the lives of more than 300 people and left tens of thousands homeless.
They were accused of providing "incomplete, imprecise and contradictory" statements about the risk of a major earthquake in the region, after weeks of tremors.
The verdicts caused international anger and bewilderment, with many critics saying that earthquakes are impossible to predict and that the experts were being made scapegoats for the disaster. Their convictions were likened to the heresy trials of Galileo during the Inquisition, after he angered the Catholic Church by insisting that the Earth revolved around the Sun.
The 6.3 magnitude quake hit L'Aquila and surrounding villages in the early hours of April 6, 2009, reducing the centre of the medieval city to rubble.
source: telegraph
Nick Squires
"There was a lot of panic," Guglielmo Armentano, the mayor of Mormanno, told the Ansa news agency.
"In our historic centre, there are some damaged buildings. As a precaution we have evacuated the hospital," he said.
Old people's homes were evacuated in Mormanno and the nearby town of Laino Borgo and Mormanno's cathedral was closed as a precaution after cracks appeared in its facade. The bell tower of a church in Santa Maria della Consolazione was also damaged.
The Italian Geophysics Institute said on its website that the quake was followed by at least 14 other tremors.
Emergency services are checking the extent of the damage.
The quake comes five days after a controversial court case in which six scientists and a senior public official were sentenced to six years in jail after being found guilty of not giving adequate warning of the huge earthquake which hit the central mountain region of Abruzzo in April, 2009.
The experts were tried by a court in L'Aquila, the city which bore the brunt of the quake, which claimed the lives of more than 300 people and left tens of thousands homeless.
They were accused of providing "incomplete, imprecise and contradictory" statements about the risk of a major earthquake in the region, after weeks of tremors.
The verdicts caused international anger and bewilderment, with many critics saying that earthquakes are impossible to predict and that the experts were being made scapegoats for the disaster. Their convictions were likened to the heresy trials of Galileo during the Inquisition, after he angered the Catholic Church by insisting that the Earth revolved around the Sun.
The 6.3 magnitude quake hit L'Aquila and surrounding villages in the early hours of April 6, 2009, reducing the centre of the medieval city to rubble.
source: telegraph
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