Italy earthquake: 6.6-magnitude tremor rocks nation's center

A powerful 6.6-magnitude earthquake rocked central Italy on Sunday morning, injuring at least 20 people, in the strongest tremor to hit the country in more than three decades.

The earthquake follows tremors last week and comes on the heels of a devastating quake in August, which killed nearly 300 people and flattened entire villages.

Many others, however, are refusing to leave, some sleeping in their cars that they believe offer better protection than the roofs over their heads.

"These people don't want to leave their area because they are really linked in. There's a long tradition there, and they have some jobs, farmers and so on, so they decide to stay there," Tommaso Della Longa of the Italian Red Cross says.

"People need to understand they need to move from there, because the situation in this area is between mountains and valleys -- it's cold even now, and snow is coming in a few weeks," he said, adding it was difficult to set up support structures there.

Landslides caused the partial disruption of the course of the Nera River, and the river flooded a road to the village of Visso, already full of debris. Visso was one of the towns affected by a large earthquake Wednesday.

Technical teams inspected dams, officials said, but have not found any damage so far.

 Morgan Kasmarik, an Australian journalist on vacation in the Italian capital with a friend, said "the whole city shook" when the quake struck.

"I was in bed, enjoying a Sunday lie-in, when I felt the room start to shake. Within seconds, the ground started to roll, like I was on a boat in choppy water," she said.

"We were both quite shaken as it was the first time either of us had ever experienced an earthquake. I'm pretty keen not to repeat the experience. (But) it didn't stop us, or the many other tourists from spilling into the streets to enjoy the beautiful day."

In central Italy, the people are accustomed to seismic events in their region, but not so many in such a short space of time.

CNN International meteorologist Derek Van Dam that Sunday's quake was Italy's strongest in 36 years and that Wednesday's temblors were "considered foreshocks" ahead of Sunday's "main earthquake."

Some 13 million people would have felt weak movement in the earth, Van Dam said, while those nearer the epicenter would have experienced strong jolts.

Sunday's earthquake struck at a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles), according to the US Geological Survey, making the epicenter relatively shallow. Generally, the more shallow the epicenter, the more a quake is felt at the earth's surface, and the more damage it is likely to cause.
 Rescuers have expressed fear about possible mudslides and remained wary about the risk of bringing heavy equipment up narrow roads linking the towns, villages and hamlets in this hilly region of the country.

The two earthquakes on Wednesday -- which had magnitudes of 5.5 and 6.1 -- did not result in any reported deaths. But the destruction of nearby historic structures was widely seen as a loss to cultural heritage.

Powerful tremors on Wednesday and Thursday happened about 50 miles north of where a devastating quake killed nearly 300 people in August.