Survivors of Italian earthquake describe 'living nightmare'

Guido Mariani looked at his black and blue knees, turned over his grazed hands and then, almost in slow motion, let his eyes flick to his flatmate's lifeless body beside him.

Watching the dead man's grieving father bent over the corpse in prayer, he knew it could so easily have been his own father kneeling on the dusty ground, tears rolling down his face.

But Guido was one of the lucky ones after the quake, which killed at least 207 people and left 50,000 homeless. The 23-year-old student reckons he owes his life to the two wooden beams that prevented one of the apartment walls from collapsing on top of him.

He spent three hours trapped under the rubble. His mobile phone lay agonisingly out of reach, so although he could hear its incessant ringing and knew it was frantic family members trying to find out if he was alive, he could do nothing to allay their fears.

"I wasn't able to free myself. I was shouting for help," Guido said, his eyes still wide with shock.

"Eventually a small opening appeared, hands reached in, they grabbed me and pulled me out. Outside it was like a living nightmare."

Further along the Via XX Settembre, tearful students huddled in blankets and slippers outside the half-collapsed university residence that they had managed to escape when the quake struck in the early hours of Monday morning local time. The building had been four storeys high but was now barely one, its concrete floors folded in two like a flimsy birthday card.

As rescue workers pulled the body of a male student out of the rubble, and aftershocks continued to reverberate around the battered town, it was almost too much to bear for some survivors. "I don't know who was protecting us, why we are still alive," Lucia, a 23-year-old student, told La Republica. "We don't know how many of our colleagues have been killed.

"It was like an explosion," she explained. "We were on the fourth floor. We went all the way down the stairs without breathing, because of the dust. We waited for three hours until the first signs of help came."

But there were glimmers of hope as rescue workers battled against the clock to reach those in their homes turned death traps.

A 2-year-old was pulled from the rubble, alive thanks to the mother who died shielding the toddler with her own body.

A doctor at L'Aquila's main hospital told Italian television that he had seen "three or four babies die in my arms, from having suffocated in rubble". But he had also encountered joy: a pregnant woman who escaped the carnage gave birth to a baby girl in the back of an ambulance.

And news came that six students had been dug out alive from the twisted remains of the student university - an amazing 15 hours after the ground had begun to shake.

- INDEPENDENT

Victims:

- 207 people confirmed dead, including 17 still unidentified bodies
- At least two foreigners among dead, students from Greece and the Czech Republic
- More than 1,000 injured, at least 100 in serious condition
- 15 people unaccounted for, including an Israeli student
- Some 50,000 homeless

Damage:

- Between 10,000 to 15,000 buildings damaged or destroyed
- Medieval churches, towers and palaces in and around L'Aquila have suffered collapses. The cathedral in L'Aquila, the red-and-white stone basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio and the city's 16th-century Spanish fort are among the most damaged
- Euro 30 million requested by culture officials for emergency works to shore up the most important architectural treasures

Rescue and relief:

- More than 7,000 rescuers involved
- At least 100 people pulled alive from the rubble
- 5,000 rooms in hotels on the nearby Adriatic coast available for homeless
- Rescuers setting up 20 tent camps to host up to 14,500 people
- Meals distributed at 16 field kitchens
- Euro 30 million approved by the government for emergency aid

- AP