The steeple of the church had snapped off and crashed to the ground.
“Everything’s collapsed, it’s chaos, buildings across the town are down,”
a fireman in Cavezzo said. Shops, banks and cafés were closed and streets
cordoned off by police. A large shopping block had been reduced to a heap of
smashed bricks and mortar.
Franco Raucci, 62, who is retired, said: “It was more devastating than the
last one last Sunday. We were just licking our wounds from the last
earthquake. We thought that all the weak buildings had already fallen.”
Residents set up tents in their gardens and were preparing to spend the night
in the open for fear of further aftershocks.
Towns which were already badly battered from the first quake suffered fresh
damage, with churches, towers and factories collapsing into piles of rubble.
Soldiers and rescue officials were deployed to the area as emergency
coordinators tried to assess the scale of the damage.
Mario Monti, the prime minister, promised that his government would do “all
that it must and all that is possible in the briefest period to guarantee
the resumption of normal life in this area that is so special, so important
and so productive for Italy.”
In Mirandola, near the quake’s epicentre, the main cathedral collapsed along
with the town’s oldest church, St. Frances.
In the town of Sant’Agostino, a person was killed by falling debris, while
three workers were killed in a factory in Mirandola, which had only reopened
on Monday after work was suspended as a result of the earlier quake.
“Last night was the first night we’d spent back in our homes after the
first quake. Then another one hit,” one Sant’ Agostino resident said.
Work was suspended in factories owned by Ferrari and Ducati, two of the
region’s world famous makers of cars and motorbikes.
Modena’s balsamic vinegae industry was also hit, with the head of the
consortium saying 15 million euros (£12 million) worth in stock had been “seriously
damaged”. The
May 20 quake destroyed 400,000 wheels of maturing Parmesan cheese.
Italy’s friendly football match against Luxembourg, due to be played in Parma,
just 40 miles west of the quake, was cancelled.
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