SAN FELICE SUL PANARO, Italy — Workers at the small machinery company had just returned for their first shift since Italy’s powerful and deadly quake nine days ago when another one struck Tuesday morning, collapsing the roof.
At least three employees at the factory — two immigrants and an Italian engineer checking the building’s stability — were among those killed in the second deadly quake this month to strike a region of Italy that hadn’t considered itself particularly quake-prone.
By late Tuesday, the death toll stood at 16, with one person missing: a worker at the machinery factory in the small town of San Felice Sul Panaro. About 350 people were injured in the 5.8-magnitude quake north of Bologna in Emilia Romagna, one of Italy’s more productive regions, agriculturally and industrially.
The injured included a 65-year-old woman pulled out alive by rescuers after she had been lying for 12 hours in the rubble of her apartment’s kitchen in Cavezzo, another town hit hard by the quake. Firefighters told Sky TG24 TV that a piece of furniture, which had toppled over, saved her from being crushed by the wreckage. She was taken to a hospital for treatment.
The building had been damaged in the May 20 quake and had been vacant since. The woman had just gone back inside it Tuesday morning to retrieve some clothes when the 9 a.m. temblor knocked down the building, firefighters said.
Factories, barns and churches fell, dealing a second blow to a region where thousands remained homeless from last week’s stronger, 6.0-magnitude temblor.
The two quakes struck one of the most productive regions in Italy at a particularly crucial moment, as the country faces enormous pressure to grow its economy to stave off the continent’s debt crisis. Italy’s economic growth has been stagnant for at least a decade, and the national economy is forecast to contract by 1.2 percent this year.
The area — which encompasses the cities of Modena, Mantua and Bologna — is prized for its super-car production, churning out Ferraris, Maseratis and Lamborghinis; its world-famous Parmesan cheese; and its machinery companies, less well-known but critical to the economy.
Like the May 20 quake, which killed seven people, many of the dead in Tuesday’s temblor were workers inside huge warehouses.
The quake terrified many of the thousands of people who have been living in tents or cars since the earlier quake and created a whole new wave of homeless.
“I was shaving, and I ran out very fast, half-dressed,” a resident of Sant’Agostino, one of the towns devastated in the earlier quake, told AP Television News.
