Strong earthquake kills four in Italy

SANT’AGOSTINO DI FERRARA, Italy – A magnitude-6.0 earthquake shook several small towns in northeast Italy, killing four people, knocking down a clock tower and other centuries-old buildings and causing millions in losses to the region known for making Parmesan cheese.

The quake struck at 4:04 a.m. Sunday, with its epicenter about 22 miles north of Bologna at a relatively shallow depth of 3.2 miles, the U.S. Geological Survey said. Civil protection agency official Adriano Gumina described it as the worst quake to hit the region since the 1300s.

The four people killed were factory workers on the overnight shift when their buildings, in three separate locations, collapsed, agency chief Franco Gabrielli said.

Two of the dead were workers at a ceramics factory in the town of Sant’Agostino di Ferrara. Their cavernous building turned into a pile of rubble, leaving twisted metal supports jutting out at odd angles and the roof mangled.

“This is immense damage, but the worst part is we lost two people,” fellow worker Stefano Zeni said. News reports said one of the dead had worked the shift of an ill colleague. Elsewhere in the town, another worker was found dead under factory rubble.

In the town of Ponte Rodoni di Bondeno, a worker also died as his factory collapsed, emergency workers told Italian news agencies.

The quake struck in the farm region known for production of Parmigiano and Grana cheeses.

Nearly 12 hours after the quake, a sharp aftershock alarmed the residents of Sant’Agostino di Ferrara and knocked off part of a wall of city hall. The building already had been pummeled by the pre-dawn quake, which left a gaping hole on one side of it.

The same aftershock knocked down most of the clock tower in the town of Finale Emilia, injuring a firefighter.