Italy Quake Toll Rises

In tiny, once peaceful villages, aftershocks are jarring Italians, who are laying out their dead after a massive earthquake—Italy’s worst in 30 years—killed at least 150 people and left tens of thousands more homeless. Many are angry that they weren’t warned of the possibility of the deadly quake, which the Italian government says could not have been predicted. Some villagers have felt tremors in last few weeks: “And that isn’t normal,” said Virgilio Collajani, a resident of Onna, a town near the quake’s epicenter. “This is a seismic area, sure. But no one alive here today has experienced an earthquake.” Worst affected was Onna’s town center, where the delicate 16th- and 17th-century buildings crumbled as the ground shook under them. A neoclassical convent was partially devastated, and its abbess, Mother Gemma Antoniucci, died when the ceiling came tumbling down as she slept.