Wine Openers

Map courtesy USGS.

The world, at last that part which still hadn’t been shaken awake, awoke Wednesday morning to find parts of central Italy devastated (I can’t think of a better word) by a series of earthquakes.

Tremors of up to 6.2 magnitude still were being reported Thursday across parts of three regions – Umbria, Lazio and Marche – with the greatest damage and most casualties said to be centered in the small mountain town (population about 2,000) of Amatrice, which a report in the New York Times said resembled a “war zone.”

Other jolts were being reported as far away as Rome and Bologna.

“It was Dante’s ‘Inferno,’ it was apocalyptic, I don’t know,” said one survivor in the Times.

Today’s edition of La Repubblica reports at least 250 people have been killed, many of them caught in their beds when the earthquake struck at 3:36 a.m. It’s feared the death toll will reach that of the 2009 earthquake in and around the town of Aquila which claimed an estimated 309 loves.

I’ve been watching and reading with the help of other Italophone bloggers, notably Jeremy Parzens and Susannah Gold, both of who speak fluent Italian and both of who have strong ties with the people and culture of Italy.

An interactive map of the earthquake zone from the U.S. Geological Survey is available here. A link to the Italian Red Cross and a site for donations is here.