Tag Archives: Earthquake

Italy quake death toll hits 267, state funeral planned

A drone photo shows the damages following an earthquake in Pescara del Tronto, central Italy, August 25

By Steve Scherer and Gabriele Pileri

PESCARA DEL TRONTO, Italy (Reuters) – Hopes of finding more survivors faded on Friday three days after a powerful earthquake hit central Italy, with the death toll rising to 267 and the rescue operation in some of the stricken areas called off.

Sniffer dogs and emergency crews continued to scour piles of rubble in Amatrice, a picturesque town popular with tourists which was leveled by Wednesday’s quake and where 207 bodies have been retrieved so far.

Mayor Sergio Pirozzi said around 15 people, including some children and the local baker, had not been accounted for. “Only a miracle can bring our friends back alive from the rubble, but we are still digging because many are missing,” he told reporters.

In nearby villages, such as Pescara del Tronto, rescuers pulled out after all the missing had been accounted for.

Italy plans to hold a state funeral for around 40 of the victims on Saturday, which will be held in the nearby city of Ascoli Piceno.

A day of national mourning was announced, with flags due to fly at half mast around the country for the dead, who include a number of foreigners.

The civil protection department in Rome said nearly 400 people were being treated for injuries in hospitals, and 40 of them were in critical condition. An estimated 2,500 people were left homeless by the most deadly quake in Italy since 2009.

Survivors with nowhere else to go are sleeping in neat rows of blue tents set up by emergency services close to their flattened communities. The government has promised to rebuild the region, but some local people feared that would never happen.

“I’m afraid our village and others like it will just die. Most people don’t live here year round anyway. In the winter time the towns are virtually empty,” said Salvatore Petrucci, 77, who lived in the nearby small village of Trisunga.

“We may be the last ones to have lived in Trisunga,” he said.

More than 920 aftershocks have hit the area since the original 6.2 magnitude quake struck early Wednesday. By Friday, most of the outlying communities were quiet and empty, buildings lying in crumpled mounds, the innards of private homes exposed to the skies and belongings scattered in the debris.

“We have removed the last bodies that we knew about,” said Paolo Cortelli, a member of the Alpine Rescue national service who helped to recover about 30 bodies from Pescara del Tronto.

“We don’t know, and we might never know, if the number of missing that we knew about actually corresponds to the people who were actually under the rubble.”

The foreigners who died in the disaster included six Romanians, a Spanish woman, a Canadian and an Albanian. The British embassy in Rome declined to comment on reports that three Britons, including a 14-year-old boy had died.

The area is popular with holidaymakers and local authorities were struggling to pin down how many visitors were present when the quake hit.

The Romanian Foreign Ministry said 17 Romanians were still missing. Italy has a large Romanian community, and some of the victims were resident in the country.

FUNERAL

The first funeral of a victim was held in Rome on Friday, for Marco Santarelli, the 28-year-old son of a senior state official, who died in the family’s holiday home in Amatrice.

“I cannot find the words to describe the grief of a father who outlives his own children. Perhaps there are no words,” Marco’s father, Filippo Santarelli, told Corriere della Sera newspaper.

Hardly a single building was left unscathed in Amatrice, which was last year voted one of the most beautiful old towns in Italy and is famous for its local cuisine.

“Amatrice will have to be razed to the ground,” said mayor Pirozzi, who urged youngsters not to leave the area, saying that would mean the end of their community. “No night can last so long that the sun never rises again. I am convinced that Amatrice will rise again. We owe it to the 207 people who died here.”

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has declared a state of emergency for the region, allowing the government to release an immediate 50 million euros ($56 million) for the relief work.

He has promised to rebuild the shattered homes and said he would also renew efforts to bolster Italy’s flimsy defenses against earthquakes that regularly batter the country.

“We want those communities to have the chance of a future and not just memories,” he told reporters in Rome on Thursday.

Italy has a poor record of rebuilding after quakes. About 8,300 people who were forced to leave their homes after a deadly earthquake in L’Aquila in 2009 are still living in temporary accommodation.

This latest disaster represents a major political challenge for Renzi, who has been in office for two years. Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was widely criticized for what was perceived to be a botched response to the L’Aquila calamity.

Renzi declined to predict when the homeless might be rehoused. “This is not about setting challenges and making promises. We need the pace of a marathon runner,” he said.

Most of the buildings in the area were built hundreds of years ago, long before any anti-seismic building norms were introduced, helping to explain the widespread destruction.

Cultural Minister Dario Franceschini said all 293 culturally important sites, many of them churches, had either collapsed or been seriously damaged.

Italy sits on two fault lines, making it one of the most seismically active countries in Europe. Almost 30 people died in earthquakes in northern Italy in 2012 while more than 300 died in the L’Aquila disaster.

($1 = 0.8857 euros)

(Writing by Crispian Balmer and Philip Pullella, editing by David Stamp)

Italy quake death toll nears 250 as rescuers search demolished towns

Rescuers work at a collapsed building following an earthquake in Amatrice

By Steve Scherer and Gabriele Pileri

AMATRICE, Italy (Reuters) – The death toll from a devastating earthquake in central Italy reached at least 241 people on Thursday and could rise further after rescue teams worked through the night to try to find survivors under the rubble of flattened towns.

The 6.2 magnitude quake struck a cluster of mountain communities 140 km (85 miles) east of Rome early on Wednesday as people slept, destroying hundreds of homes.

The Civil Protection department officially revised the death toll down to 241 from a previous 247 given earlier on Thursday morning.

Officials said they expected to confirm more deaths as the search operation continued. Trucks full of rubble left the area every few minutes, including one in which a dusty doll could be seen lying on top of tonnes of debris.

On Thursday, the sun rose on frightened people who had slept in cars or tents, the earth continuing to tremble under their feet from aftershocks, hundreds of which have struck since the quake. Two registered 5.1 and 5.4, just before dawn.

“I haven’t slept much because I was really afraid,” said 70-year-old Arturo Onesi from the town of Arquata del Tronto, who spent the night in a tent camp for survivors and rescue workers.

The earthquake was powerful enough to be felt in Bologna to the north and Naples to the south, both more than 220 km (135 miles) from the epicenter.

Many of those killed or injured were holidaymakers in the four worst-hit towns – Amatrice, Pescara del Tronto, Arquata del Tronto and Accumoli – where populations increase by up to tenfold in the summer. That makes it harder to track the deaths.

One Spaniard, five Romanians, and a number of other foreigners, some of them care-givers for the elderly, were believed to be among the dead, officials said.

Aerial video taken by drones showed swathes of Amatrice, last year voted one of Italy’s most beautiful historic towns, completely flattened. The town, known across Italy and beyond for a local pasta dish, had been filling up for the 50th edition of a popular food festival this weekend.

The mayor said the bodies of 15-20 tourists were believed to be under the rubble of the Hotel Roma, which he said had about 32 guests when it collapsed on Wednesday morning.

GIRL FOUND ALIVE

About 270 people injured in Wednesday’s quake were hospitalized, the Civil Protection department said, adding that about 5,000 people, including police, firefighters, army troops and volunteers, were involved in post-quake operations.

Rescuers working with emergency lighting in the darkness saved a 10-year-old girl, pulling her alive from the rubble where she had lain for about 15 hours.

Many other children were not so lucky. A family of four, including two boys aged 8 months and 9 years, were buried when a church bell tower toppled into their house in nearby Accumoli.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s cabinet was meeting on Thursday to decide emergency measures to help the affected communities.

“Today is a day for tears, tomorrow we can talk of reconstruction,” he told reporters late on Wednesday.

The death toll appeared likely to rival or surpass that from the last major earthquake to strike Italy, which killed more than 300 people in the central city of L’Aquila in 2009.

While hopes of finding more people alive diminished by the hour, firefighters’ spokesman Luca Cari recalled that survivors were found in L’Aquila up to 72 hours after that quake.

Most of the damage was in the Lazio and Marche regions, with Lazio bearing the brunt of the damage and the biggest toll. Neighboring Umbria was also affected. All three regions are dotted with centuries-old buildings susceptible to earthquakes.

Italy sits on two fault lines, making it one of the most seismically active countries in Europe.

The country’s most deadly earthquake since the start of the 20th century came in 1908, when an earthquake followed by a tsunami killed an estimated 80,000 people in the southern regions of Reggio Calabria and Sicily.

(Additional reporting by Antonella Cinelli, Giulia Segreti and Roberto Mignucci; Writing by Philip Pullella; Editing by Pravin Char and Peter Graff)

At least 120 killed as quake flattens towns in central Italy

rescuers helping those in Italian quake

By Steve Scherer

ACCUMOLI, Italy (Reuters) – An earthquake flattened towns in central Italy in the early hours of Wednesday, killing at least 120 people and burying some alive in their sleep, with volunteers and firefighters racing to free those trapped under mounds of rubble as darkness fell.

The quake razed mountain homes and buckled roads in a cluster of communities some 140 km (85 miles) east of Rome. It was powerful enough to be felt in Bologna to the north and Naples to the south, each more than 220 km from the epicenter.

“I was blown away by what I saw. We haven’t stopped digging all day,” said Marcello di Marco, 34, a farmer who traveled from the town of Narni some 100 km away to help with emergency services’ rescue efforts in the hamlet of Pescara del Tronto.

In the nearby village of Accumoli, a family of four, including two boys aged 8 months and 9 years, were buried when their house imploded.

As rescue workers carried away the body of the infant, carefully covered by a small blanket, the children’s grandmother blamed God: “He took them all at once,” she wailed.

The army was mobilized to help with special heavy equipment and the Treasury released 235 million euros ($265 million) of emergency funds. At the Vatican, Pope Francis dispatched part of the Holy See’s tiny firefighting force to help in the rescue.

Rescue workers used helicopters to pluck survivors to safety in more isolated villages cut off by landslides and rubble.

Aerial photographs showed whole areas of Amatrice, last year voted one of Italy’s most beautiful historic towns, flattened by the 6.2 magnitude quake. Many of those killed or missing were visitors.

“It’s all young people here, it’s holiday season, the town festival was to have been held the day after tomorrow so lots of people came for that,” said Amatrice resident Giancarlo, sitting in the road wearing just his underwear.

“It’s terrible, I’m 65 years old and I have never experienced anything like this, small tremors, yes, but nothing this big. This is a catastrophe,” he said.

Scores of people are believed unaccounted for, with the presence of the holidaymakers making it difficult to tally.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who gave the latest toll figure after visiting the area, called for national unity.

“We Italians are very good at arguing and being polemical but now let’s stand in solidarity and pride alongside those who are rescuing others,” he said. “Today is a day for tears. Tomorrow we can talk of reconstruction.”

VOICES UNDER THE RUBBLE

Patients at the badly damaged hospital in Amatrice were moved into the streets and a field hospital was set up.

“Three quarters of the town is not there anymore,” Amatrice mayor Sergio Pirozzi told state broadcaster RAI. “The aim now is to save as many lives as possible. There are voices under the rubble, we have to save the people there.”

Accumoli’s mayor, Stefano Petrucci, said some 2,500 people were left homeless in the local community of 17 hamlets.

Residents responding to wails muffled by tonnes of bricks and mortar sifted through with their bare hands before emergency services arrived with earth-moving equipment and sniffer dogs. Wide cracks had appeared like open wounds on the buildings that were still standing.

The national Civil Protection Department said some survivors would be put up elsewhere in central Italy, while others would be housed in tents that were being dispatched to the area.

Most of the damage was in the Lazio and Marche regions, with Lazio taking the brunt of the damage and the biggest toll. Neighboring Umbria was also affected. All three regions are dotted with centuries-old buildings susceptible to earthquakes.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake struck near the Umbrian city of Norcia. Italy’s earthquake institute INGV registered it at 6.0 and put the epicenter further south, closer to Accumoli and Amatrice.

It was relatively shallow at 4 km below the earth’s surface.

INGV reported 150 aftershocks in the 12 hours following the initial quake, the strongest measuring 5.5.

Residents of Rome were woken by the tremors, which rattled furniture, swayed lights and set off car alarms in most of central Italy.

“It was so strong. It seemed the bed was walking across the room by itself with us on it,” Lina Mercantini of Ceselli, Umbria, about 75 km away from the hardest hit area, told Reuters.

Italy sits on two fault lines, making it one of the most seismically active countries in Europe.

The last major earthquake to hit the country struck the central city of L’Aquila in 2009, killing more than 300 people.

The most deadly since the start of the 20th century came in 1908, when an earthquake followed by a tsunami killed an estimated 80,000 people in the southern regions of Reggio Calabria and Sicily.

(Additional reporting by Philip Pullella, Gavin Jones, Stephen Jewkes, Eleanor Biles and Giulia Segreti; Writing by Crispian Balmer and Philip Pullella; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Powerful Earthquake strikes Myanmar, at least 3 dead

Two men look at a collapsed entrance of a pagoda after an earthquake in Bagan

By Shwe Yee Saw Myint and Aung Hla Tun

YANGON (Reuters) – A powerful 6.8 magnitude earthquake shook central Myanmar on Wednesday, killing at least three people including two children, local officials said, and damaging some of the famous pagodas in the Southeast Asian nation’s ancient capital of Bagan.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake hit near the town of Chauk, southwest of Mandalay. Tremors were felt as far away as Thailand, where witnesses reported high rise buildings swaying in Bangkok, and the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka.

A fire department official from regional capital Magwe said two young girls were killed when a riverbank gave way in Yenanchaung township, south of Chauk.

One person was killed and another injured when a tobacco processing factory collapsed in the town of Pakkoku, to the north, the duty officer at the local fire department said.

There were no other confirmed casualties, and early reports suggested limited damage overall.

“My house shook during the quake. Many people were scared and they ran out of the buildings,” said Maung Maung Kyaw, a local official of the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party.

“Some of the old buildings have cracks. The biggest damage is to the bank building in the town. The damage to other buildings isn’t that significant.”

The quake struck at a relatively deep 84 km (52 miles), the USGS said.

Chauk is about 35 km (20 miles) from Bagan, known as the “City of 4 Million Pagodas” and a major draw for Myanmar’s nascent tourism industry.

Yangon-based travel agent Amy Saw, who had been in touch with her firm’s Bagan office, said some of the pagodas there had been damaged, and the Ministry of Religious Affairs put the number sustaining some kind of damage at 65.

According to the 2014 census, Chauk has a population of about 45,000, with around 185,000 living in the surrounding area. It was a thriving oilfield during the British colonial era.

“So far as we heard from our local staff, a three-storey building collapsed in Chauk and a pagoda was badly damaged in a Yenanchaung,” a fire department official in Magwe told Reuters.

Ko Tin Ko Lwin, a resident of Yenanchaung township, told Reuters that a pagoda that had been cracked before the quake had collapsed, while electricity poles and some trees were felled.

The quake shook buildings in Myanmar’s biggest city of Yangon and in other towns and cities, witnesses said.

Office buildings in the Thai capital Bangkok, to the east of Myanmar, shook for a few seconds, residents there said.

The quake was also felt in Bangladesh, to the west of Myanmar, where some people ran out into the street as buildings shook, residents said.

Myanmar is in a seismically active part of the world where the Indo-Australian Plate runs up against the Eurasian Plate.

In March, 2011, at least 74 people were killed in an earthquake in Myanmar near its borders with Thailand and Laos.

(This version of the story has been refiled to fix typo in headline)

(Reporting by Yangon and Bangkok bureaus; Writing by Robert Birsel and Antoni Slodkowski; Editing by Alex Richardson)

Powerful earthquake in Italy overnight, killing at least 73, thousands homeless

A man is carried away after having been rescued alive from the ruins following an earthquake in Amatrice

By Steve Scherer

ACCUMOLI, Italy (Reuters) – A powerful earthquake devastated a string of mountainous towns in central Italy on Wednesday, trapping residents under piles of rubble, killing at least 73 people and leaving thousands homeless.

The quake struck in the early hours of the morning when most residents were asleep, razing homes and buckling roads in a cluster of communities some 140 km (85 miles) east of Rome.

A family of four, including two boys aged 8 months and 9 years, were buried when their house in Accumoli imploded.

As rescue workers carried away the body of the infant, carefully covered by a small blanket, the children’s grandmother blamed God: “He took them all at once,” she wailed.

The army was mobilized to help with special heavy equipment and the treasury released 235 million euros ($265 million) of emergency funds. At the Vatican, Pope Francis canceled part of his general audience to pray for the victims.

Aerial photographs showed whole areas of Amatrice, voted last year as one of Italy’s most beautiful historic towns, flattened by the 6.2 magnitude quake.

“It’s all young people here, it’s holiday season, the town festival was to have been held the day after tomorrow so lots of people came for that,” said Amatrice resident Giancarlo, sitting in the road wearing just his underwear.

“It’s terrible, I’m 65-years-old and I have never experienced anything like this, small tremors, yes, but nothing this big. This is a catastrophe,” he said.

Accumoli mayor Stefano Petrucci said some 2,500 were left homeless in the local community, which is made up of 17 hamlets.

Residents responding to wails muffled by tonnes of bricks and mortar sifted through the rubble with their bare hands before emergency services arrived with earth-moving equipment and sniffer dogs. Wide cracks had appeared like open wounds on the buildings that were still standing.

The national Civil Protection Department said some survivors would be put up elsewhere in central Italy, while others would be housed in tents that were being dispatched to the area.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said he would visit the disaster area later in the day: “No one will be left alone, no family, no community, no neighborhood. We must get down to work .. to restore hope to this area which has been so badly hit,” he said in a brief televised address.

The quake hit during the summer when the area, usually sparsely populated, hosts large numbers of holidaymakers.

A spokeswoman for the civil protection department, Immacolata Postiglione, said the dead were in Amatrice, Accumoli and other villages including Pescara del Tronto and Arquata del Tronto. She put the initial death toll at 73, but said rescue teams had only just reached some stricken areas.

The earthquake caused damage in three regions — Umbria, Lazio and Marche — and was felt as far away as the southern Italian port city of Naples.

DISAPPEARING IN DUST

The hospital in Amatrice was among the buildings that were badly damaged, and patients were moved into the streets.

“Three quarters of the town is not there anymore,” Amatrice mayor Sergio Pirozzi told state broadcaster RAI. “The aim now is to save as many lives as possible. There are voices under the rubble, we have to save the people there.”

RAI reported that two Afghan girls, believed to be asylum-seekers, were also missing in the town.

The U.S. Geological Survey, which measured the quake at 6.2 magnitude, said it struck near the Umbrian city of Norcia, while Italy’s earthquake institute INGV registered it at 6.0 and put the epicenter further south, closer to Accumoli and Amatrice.

The damage was made more severe because the epicenter was at a relatively shallow 4 km below the surface of the earth. Residents of Rome were woken by the tremors, which rattled furniture, swayed lights and set off car alarms in most of central Italy.

“It was so strong. It seemed the bed was walking across the room by itself with us on it,” Lina Mercantini of Ceselli, Umbria, about 75 km away from the hardest hit area, told Reuters. Olga Urbani, in the nearby town of Scheggino, said: “Dear God it was awful. The walls creaked and all the books fell off the shelves.”

INGV reported 60 aftershocks in the four hours following the initial quake, the strongest measuring 5.5.

Italy sits on two fault lines, making it one of the most seismically active countries in Europe.

The last major earthquake to hit the country struck the central city of L’Aquila in 2009, killing more than 300 people.

The most deadly since the start of the 20th century came in 1908, when an earthquake followed by a tsunami killed an estimated 80,000 people in the southern regions of Reggio Calabria and Sicily.

($1 = 0.8868 euros)

(Writing by Crispian Balmer and Philip Pullella, reporting by Steve Scherer, Philip Pullella, Stephen Jewkes, Eleanor Biles and Giulia Segreti.; Editing by Nick Macfie, Robert Birsel and Peter Graff)

Magnitude 5.3 quake in southern Peru kills at least four

LIMA (Reuters) – A 5.3 magnitude earthquake in southern Peru killed at least four people and injured more than two dozen, authorities said on Monday.

At least 40 houses were destroyed by the Sunday quake, the country’s National Civil Defense Institute said on Monday.

The quake, in the Caylloma province of the copper-producing region Arequipa, struck 8 kilometers (5 miles) deep at 9:58 p.m. local time (0258 GMT) on Sunday, the Geophysical Institute of Peru said.

The USGS reported the earthquake as having a 5.4 magnitude.

(Reporting By Mitra Taj; Editing by Bill Trott)

Nepal quake survivors struggle with debt, raising trafficking fears

By Rina Chandran

KATHMANDU (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Hundreds of Nepalis who had borrowed money to rebuild their lives after two earthquakes left them homeless are at risk of being trafficked or duped into selling their kidneys to pay off their debts, an international development organization said.

Nepal received $4.1 billion in pledges from donors for reconstruction after quakes last April and May killed 9,000 people, injured at least 22,000 and damaged or destroyed more than 900,000 houses in the Himalayan nation.

More than a year on, reconstruction has been slow with unrest over a new constitution adding to the delays. Unable to find work, hundreds of Nepalis are deep in debt, the Asia Foundation said on Tuesday.

“Their ability to pay is very limited and indebtedness makes them more vulnerable to exploitation,” said Nandita Baruah, Asia Foundation’s deputy country representative in Kathmandu.

“Their desperation makes them take greater risks, such as sending their children away for what they think are better lives, or even selling their kidneys,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview.

“We’re going to see an uptick in people moving out to earn money as their debts become due. Some of them will be trafficked,” Baruah added.

Nepal’s economy is highly dependent on remittances sent back by its migrant workers, which make up about 30 percent of its gross domestic product.

Following the earthquakes, hundreds of migrant workers returned to Nepal to help their families.

Many are likely to have paid their employers to be allowed to return home, going without wages for several months while spending money on rebuilding, Baruah said.

“These are workers who pay 200,000-500,000 rupees ($1,850-$4,640) to go abroad in the first place, and are very likely still paying off that debt,” she said.

“The quakes exacerbated their indebtedness,” she said.

BORDER CHECKS

Activists say there are signs of an increase in the number of Nepali women and children being trafficked after last year’s disaster.

Anti-trafficking charity Maiti Nepal said it stopped 745 women and children – suspected victims of human trafficking – at the Nepal-India border in the three months following the earthquakes.

That compares with 615 such interceptions in the three months before the quakes, their data showed.

Nepal is both a source and a destination country for victims of human trafficking with some 8,500 Nepalis trafficked every year, according to the country’s human rights commission.

Women are typically trafficked for sex work, domestic work and forced marriages to India, the Middle East, China and South Korea – while men are made to work in construction, as drivers and in hotels in India, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Some victims are duped into selling their kidneys and brought to India, where a chronic organ shortage has fueled a black-market trade in illegal transplants, activists say.

Nepal’s economy is forecast by the Asian Development Bank to have grown only about 1.5 percent in the fiscal year to mid-July after reconstruction delays and trade disruptions. A recovery is dependent on the pace of reconstruction, it said.

“Now, the aid will also stop flowing. We’re going to see more migration, more trafficking,” said Baruah.

“Those who have taken on debt don’t have options,” she said.

(Reporting by Rina Chandran @rinachandran, Editing by Katie Nguyen. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org to see more stories.)

Magnitude 6.4 quake strikes Ecuador’s northwest coast, no deaths reported

QUITO (Reuters) – A shallow earthquake with a magnitude of 6.4 struck Ecuador’s northwest coast on Sunday, in the region of April’s deadly quake, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said.

The quake was centered near the town of Esmeraldas, northwest of the capital Quito, at a depth of about 35 km (22 miles), the USGS said.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center did not issue a tsunami warning immediately after the quake.

President Rafael Correa said authorities had not received any reports of casualties or material damage.

“We must remain calm,” Correa said during a telephone call to a state-run television station.

“These are normal replicas, though the fear that people feel is understandable – especially the victims of the April 16 quake.”

The tremor was felt in Quito and the coastal business hub of Guayaquil, with residents streaming out of buildings into the streets, according to witnesses.

Calm quickly returned to both cities after residents saw that no damage had been done.

The coastal region has been hit by a series of quakes since the April 7.8 tremor that killed more than 650 people, the nation’s strongest quake in decades.

In May, two successive quakes measuring 6.7 and 6.8 in magnitude killed one person and caused minor damage.

(Reporting by Alexandra Valencia, Michael Perry and Mary Milliken Writing by Brian Ellsworth; Editing by Ryan Woo)

Magnitude 5.7 quake shakes southern Mexico

Workers evacuate a building after an earthquake in Mexico City, Mexico, June 27, 2016

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A 5.7 magnitude earthquake hit Mexico’s southern state of Oaxaca on Monday, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said, shaking buildings as far away as Mexico City, but officials reported there were no immediate damages.

The quake struck 10 kilometers (6 miles) north of the town of Pinotepa de Don Luis at a depth of 10 km (6 miles), the USGS said.

“It felt horrible and very strong, and it felt like it lasted two or three minutes,” said a receptionist at the Hotel Las Gaviotas de Pinotepa in Oaxaca state, who declined to give her name.

The shaking was felt more than 360 km (225 miles) away in Mexico City, where some offices were evacuated.

Nonetheless, Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said on Twitter there were no immediate reports of damage.

“Our representatives all over the state have reported to us that the preliminary situation is that there is no damage anywhere,” said Felipe Reyna, emergency services coordinator in Oaxaca.

Mexican national oil company Pemex said it had no immediate news on the state of its Salina Cruz refinery in Oaxaca, the company’s biggest with a crude processing capacity of 330,000 barrels per day.

But Oaxaca Governor Gabino Cue said on Twitter that there was no damage at industrial installations in the state.

(Reporting by Noe Torres, Ana Isabel Martinez and Alexandra Alper; Editing by Simon Gardner and Sandra Maler)

Shallow earthquake shakes southern California

(Reuters) – A shallow earthquake measuring 5.2 magnitude struck early on Friday in Southern California, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The epicenter of the tremor, recorded at about 1 a.m., was 12 miles (20 km) northwest of Borrego Springs, a desert area some 85 miles from San Diego.

The quake was felt by people from San Diego to parts of Los Angeles, more than 100 miles away, according to postings on social media.

“My entire home shook and everything rattled!!” Itica Milanes, a news anchor for an ABC affiliate in San Diego, said on Twitter.

Actress Lili Reinhart tweeted, “Experienced my first LA earthquake last night — woke up when my bed literally starting moving back and forth… So weird.”

The temblor was followed by aftershocks in the area ranging in magnitude from 2.6 to 3.8, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The Los Angeles County Fire Department and San Diego Police Department said there were no reports of serious damage or injuries.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee and Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Alison Williams, Toni Reinhold)