Devastating Photo From Earthquake In Italy Captures Just How Bad The Damage Is

A powerful, 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck central Italy early Wednesday morning.

The earthquake caused whole portions of towns to collapse, destroying homes and burying people. At least 73 people have died, and that number is expected to rise.

A photo by Adamo Di Loreto for Reuters shows the destruction in the town of Pescara del Tronto.

Rescue operations, which you can see in the photo, are going on in many towns in central Italy. People are being pulled from underneath the rubble, both alive and dead. This is why the number of those killed by the earthquake is expected to rise.

In another photo, a man walks through a street whose buildings have completely collapsed in Pescara del Tronto. You can see homes torn apart and left in rubble.

The earthquake affected the central regions of Umbria, Lazio and Marche and tremors could be felt from Bologna to Naples. At least 100 people were injured and the number of people missing is still unknown, according to the New York Times.

Italy is particularly prone to earthquakes, as it sits on two fault lines. Earthquakes have historically destroyed towns throughout the country.

The last time a major earthquake hit the country was in 2009, when one struck the Abruzzo region, killing over 300 people.

The towns of Amatrice and Accumoli in the region of Lazio are facing an extreme amount of destruction with this earthquake. Fifty-three people died in just those towns alone, according to the New York Times, as of early Wednesday afternoon.

Ilde, a high school teacher from Rome who was in Amatrice for her annual summer vacation, told the New York Times she was awoken by noise at 3:30 in the morning. Her home was damaged but not destroyed.

But when she looked outside, all she saw was the town in ruin. She said,

It was Dante's 'Inferno,' it was apocalyptic, I don't know.

Sergio Pirozzi, the mayor of Amatrice, said that half of the town is gone, according to Mashable. He told RAI, the Italian public television channel, that the destruction might continue as there was a landslide and a bridge might collapse.

Pirozzi said,

There are so many dead I cannot make an estimate. [...] We have already extracted several dead bodies but we do not know how many there are there below.

A massive, 6.8 magnitude earthquake also struck Myanmar on Wednesday morning. Several Buddhist pagodas were destroyed but deaths are expected to be low as it hit away from densely populated cities, according to The Atlantic.

At least three people were killed by the earthquake in Myanmar as of Wednesday morning, according to the Associated Press.

Citations: Reuters, New York Times, New York Times, The Atlantic, AP