On a bench in a camp outside what was left of Amatrice, Elsa sat and cried. Her home had collapsed in the earthquake that had reduced the hilltop town to rubble, she said. She had spent the last two nights here, in a tent.



A blessed relief: her children had survived. But her aunt and many of her friends were among the nearly 300 people who died in Amatrice and neighbouring towns in the early hours of Wednesday when the 6.2-magnitude quake struck.

“Everything is destroyed, everything is broken,” said Elsa, 66, who asked that her surname not be used. “We have nothing. Amatrice is finished. I wish I had died too. I’m an old woman. What do I have to live for?”

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As powerful aftershocks damaged key access roads on Friday and hopes faded that more survivors would be found, the government declared Saturday a national day of mourning.

A state funeral will be held for some of the victims, attended by the president, Sergio Mattarella. The prime minister, Matteo Renzi, declared a state of emergency, authorised an initial €50m (£43m) in aid and cancelled residents’ taxes.

The head of the civil protection agency, Immacolata Postiglione, said the search for survivors would continue. “I confirm once again, as we have from the start, that the units doing the searches and rescues, including with dogs, are absolutely fully active,” she said.

At least 215 people have been pulled alive from the rubble, but no survivors have been found since Wednesday night and rescue workers on the ground conceded there was very little chance of any more.

The mayor of Amatrice, Sergio Pirozzi, said finding someone alive three days after the quake “would take a miracle”. Fifteen people were still missing, Pirozzi said, and workers would continue digging until all the bodies had been recovered. “I want to thank all the volunteers,” he said. “I am eternally grateful, they have saved hundreds of lives.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Firefighters and emergency rescuers look at excavators used to search for quake victims in Amatrice. Photograph: Andreas Solaro/AFP/Getty Images

Already weakened buildings crumbled further after the biggest of Friday’s tremors, measured at magnitude 4.7. Pirozzi said damage to two road bridges risked leaving the town “without any connection” to the outside world.

Nearly 1,000 aftershocks have rocked the area straddling the regions of Umbria, Marche and Lazio in the central Apennine mountains since the original quake in the early hours of Wednesday.

Most of the confirmed deaths were in Amatrice, where 218 people died including three Britons: Marcos Burnett, 14, who was on holiday with his parents and sister, and Will Henniker-Gotley, 55, and his wife, Maria, 51, from south London. Marcos’s parents are being treated in hospital for minor injuries. The UK foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, said on Thursday that extra staff had been sent to the region.

Eight Romanians, a Canadian, a Spaniard and a Salvadoran were also among those killed, and more than 360 people are being treated in hospital. The 2,500-strong population of the medieval hilltop town, voted one of Italy’s most beautiful historic towns last year, had been swollen with summer visitors, many from Rome, in anticipation of its popular annual food festival this weekend.

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Forty-nine people died in nearby Arcquarta del Tronto and its tiny hamlet of Pescara del Tronto, which was almost completely razed, and most of the remainder were from neighbouring Accumoli.

Some survivors were allowed to pick up essential items from their homes on Friday, accompanied by rescue workers. “Last night we slept in the car. Tonight, I don’t know,” said Nello Caffini, carrying his sister-in-law’s belongings on his head through Pescara del Tronto.



More than 2,100 people spent Thursday night under canvas in tent cities. Luca, 48, a volunteer with the Italian aid organisation Anpas, had spent the past two days setting up one such camp for 250 people outside Amatrice. “They’re traumatised,” he said. “Here at least they can sleep, have three meals a day, shower. And maybe start rebuilding their sense of community.”

For many, however, the only thing binding the community together was grief. “The pain is communal, the tragedy is collective,” said a 40-year-old man who gave only his last name, Torrino.



Standing not far from the camp, he held his young daughter’s hand as he surveyed a crumbling house. The front wall had fallen away completely, and Torrino pointed out an exposed bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen. “Eight people in my family died,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A man stands near his destroyed car, by a church that collapsed in Pescara del Tronto. Photograph: Awakening/Getty Images

A hundred metres further along, many more families were gathered outside a makeshift morgue set up by Italian authorities for relatives to identify their dead. They stood anxiously, holding each other, waiting for the worst. When the identity of another body was confirmed, entire families broke down in tears, men and women weeping.

Standing with the mourners was Father Bogdan, 33, a priest from the Romanian Orthodox Church, who had come from Rome on the day of the earthquake and had spent the last two nights sleeping in his car. “People need spiritual help as much as material aid,” he said. “We’re here to provide hope.”

Waiting anxiously nearby was Mario Cortoni, 60, who runs a refugee organisation and lives six miles from Amatrice. Thirty Kurdish, Afghan and Pakistani refugees had been living in Amatrice, he said, and 29 were known to have survived.

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Cortoni was waiting to find out whether a 27-year-old refugee from Afghanistan was among the dead. “I’m not hopeful,” he said. “He was such a smart guy. He had escaped war and persecution, came to Italy nine months ago. And now look what’s happened. It’s just horrible.”

Elsa, when asked where she would be sleeping on Friday, said: “This tent. I have nowhere else to go. But what are we going to do when winter arrives? It starts getting cold in September. What will we do?”

As other residents passed, she asked them about their families. “How is Veronica? Paolo? Have you heard from your wife?” More often than not, the questions were met with a shake of the head. “So many dead,” Elsa said. “So many dead.”

As the massive rescue and relief effort continued, there were mounting questions as to why there had been so many deaths in an area known for decades to be the most seismically hazardous in Europe.



After a 2009 earthquake in nearby L’Aquila left 300 people dead, authorities released €1bn to upgrade buildings in the region, but takeup has been low. Despite eight devastating earthquakes in 40 years, experts estimate 70% of Italy’s buildings do not meet seismic standards.

Italy’s culture minister said 293 historical buildings had been damaged or destroyed by the Amatrice quake, and public prosecutors announced an investigation into whether anyone could be held responsible.



Renzi announced plans to help the country prepare better and address poor building standards, saying Italy should “have a plan that is not just limited to the management of emergency situations”.



But the prime minister said suggestions that the country could easily construct quake-proof buildings were “absurd”. It was difficult to imagine, he said, that this level of destruction “could have been avoided simply by using different building technology. We’re talking about medieval-era towns.”

Italy’s older buildings are not obliged to conform to anti-seismic building codes, and experts estimate it could cost more than €90bn to reinforce all the country’s historic buildings. Targeted improvement work, though, could be effective.



Compounding the problem is the fact that many more modern buildings do not comply with regulations when they are built, and often prove deadlier than older constructions when an earthquake strikes.

News reports in Amatrice said investigators were looking in particular into the town’s Romolo Capranica school, which was restored in 2012 using funds provided after the L’Aquila quake. It all but collapsed on Wednesday, while the town’s 13th-century clock tower remained standing.

“We are able to prevent all these deaths,” Armando Zambrano, of the national council of engineers, told the Associated Press. “The problem is actually doing it. These tragedies keep happening because we don’t intervene. After each tragedy we say we will act, but then the weeks go by and nothing happens.”