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New quake as death toll hits 29Friday, November 1, 2002 Posted: 10:58 PM EST (0358 GMT)
Hundreds of people were evacuated from the town's historic center Friday after a second tremor, only slightly less powerful than the first, filled the village sky with a heavy cloud of dust that settled slowly back again to earth. The local police chief told CNN that an investigation was under way to determine if any criminal negligence could have contributed to the 42-year-old school's collapse Thursday. Angry residents are asking why the school fell like a house of cards while other structures nearby had only minor damage. But the rest of San Giuliano di Puglia did not escape unscathed. Police said that many of the evacuated homes were teetering on the edge of collapse and would have to be rebuilt before their occupants could return. The evacuees were camping in tents in the village sports center, next to the gymnasium being used as a makeshift morgue for the children who died in Thursday's 5.9 magnitude quake. Three women were also killed Thursday -- one of them a teacher at the school. In all, 29 people -- 26 of them between the ages of 3 and 10 -- died. But rescuers had pulled 35 children alive out of the rubble of their two-story school. About 100 people were admitted to the hospital in Termoli, and 35 were being treated in Larino, the town prefect's office said. Sixty-two people -- all students except for four teachers and two janitors -- were at the school, in the village when the quake struck Thursday at 11:30 a.m. Friday's aftershock -- with a magnitude of 5.8 -- struck just after 4 p.m. (10 a.m. ET) and sent sobbing families streaming in panic from the gymnasium just as they began the grim task of identifying the bodies of the children lost Thursday. Villagers filled the streets, afraid to be inside their homes. Friday's quake was centered about 35 miles west of Foggia, about 5 miles from the center of Thursday's temblor. Aerial views of the neighborhood showed all the buildings intact except for the school, which was in ruins, the top floor collapsed into the ground floor. In 1980, an earthquake in the Naples area killed 2,570 people and left 30,000 homeless in the southern Campania and Basilicata regions. The Campobasso area is far from Sicily's Mount Etna, Europe's largest volcano, which came back to life over the weekend following a series of earthquakes. Volcano specialists say the quakes in Sicily and Campobasso are not related. -- CNN Correspondent Chris Burns, Producer Flavia Taggiasca, and Journalist Delia Gallagher contributed to this report.
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