While the earth continues to tremble – is of the first afternoon, a new powerful shock, magnitude 5 recorded in the north of Durres – new update on the budget of the victims of the earthquake that hit Albania in the early hours of the morning. The number of dead rose to 23, and 15 the missing drivers. The wounded are about 650, while it is not stated the number of missing.
in the Meantime, continue the rescue operations that led to the extraction from the ruins of the 43 people who survived the collapse of some buildings. Under the rubble are dead, 12 people in Durres, the largest port city, seven-to-Thumane, the mountain resort and village of Kruja, the hometown of the national hero Skanderbeg. In Kurbin, is, instead, died a man who in attempt to escape you are launched into the void from the balcony of the house. A died in Lezha in the North of the Country, for the collapse of a road. In the capital, Tirana, the people fell in the street in the night in a panic.
As announced, the Albanian prime minister Edi Rama visited the city of Thumane where he met some of the displaced families housed in makeshift tents set up in a soccer field. Rama, visibly shaken, addressed the displaced persons, the words of comfort and then is broken down and without making statements to the press. The prime minister in the evening, he addressed the issue of displaced persons with a post, explaining that the government is in negotiation with the hotels of Durres, Kavaja and also in Vlora, if necessary, to offer them accommodation. “The winter”, writes Rama on Facebook – will not be spent nor under the open sky, in tents”.
The first quake, measuring 6.5, hit the Country of the Eagles at 3,54. According to the data of the national Institute of geophysics and volcanology (Ingv) in italy and the united states geological survey Usgs, the earthquake had a hypocenter at about ten kilometres deep and the epicentre was between Shijak and Durres. Always in Durres you are curling up on themselves and also three hotels. At least four victims – two women, an elder and his nephew, a teenager – between the rubble of the hotel Vila Palma, in a building of three floors. The second hotel collapsed in the beach area: as was announced by the ministry of Defence of albania, where a man was found without life.
But at the first light of dawn the whole of Durres it was a city deeply wounded by the walls gutted, cracks, rubble, and fear, while the citizens tried to organize teams to remove the debris wherever it was perceived as a sign of life. On social have bounced the photographs of the rescue of a child screaming, half his body a prisoner of the rubble.
