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‘Something needs to be done’
200 mi
ITALY
200 km
Amatrice Rome Magnitude 6.2 quake hits town Sicily
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Mediterranean Sea
SOURCE: maps4news/HERE
AP
Aftershocks rattle Italian quake zone Death toll rises to 250
Ebenezer Middle School band recently received 13 new instruments which will help to spread the love of music to more students in the school. The total value of the donations is $32,175, and comes from the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation, a nonprofit organization which donates musical instruments to under-funded music programs, according to its website, www. mhopus.org. The donations include several saxophones, baritones, tubas, an oboe, a bassoon and a French horn. “I’m ecstatic about the donations,” said Annette Torres, the school’s band director. “This definitely fills a need for more of our students to have access to instruments.” Band students typically rent instruments from outside sources, and the
KEITH GEDAMKE / THE SUMTER ITEM
PESCARA DEL TRONO, Italy (AP) — Aftershocks in central Italy rattled residents and rescue workers alike Thursday, as crews worked to find more earthquake survivors and the country anguished over its repeated failure to protect ancient towns and modern cities from seismic catastrophes. A day after a shallow quake killed 250 people and leveled three small towns, a 4.3 magnitude aftershock sent up plumes of thick gray dust in the hard-hit town of Amatrice. The aftershock crumbled already cracked buildings, prompted authorities to close roads and sent another person to the hospital. It was only one of the more than 470 temblors that have followed Wednesday’s predawn quake. Firefighters and rescue crews using sniffer dogs worked in teams around the hard-hit areas in central Italy, pulling chunks of cement, rock and metal from mounds of rubble where homes once stood. Rescuers refused to say when their work would shift from saving lives to recovering bodies, noting that one person was pulled alive from the rubble 72 hours after a 2009 quake in the Italian town of L’Aquila. “We will work relentlessly until the last person is found, and make sure no one is trapped,” said Lorenzo Botti, a rescue team spokesman. Worst affected by the quake were the tiny towns of Amatrice and Accumoli near Rieti, 60 miles northeast of Rome, and Pescara del Tronto, 15 miles further to the east. Many were left homeless by the scale of the destruction, their homes and apartments declared uninhabitable. Some survivors, escorted by firefighters were allowed to go back inside homes briefly Thursday to get essential necessities for what will surely be an extended absence. “Last night we slept in the car. Tonight, I don’t know,” said Nello Caffini as he carried his sister-in-law’s belongings on his head after being allowed to go quickly into her home in Pescara del Tronto. Caffini has a house in nearby Ascoli, but said his sisterin-law was too terrified by the aftershocks to go inside it.
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Julio Hernandez,12; Zabien Jenkins,12; and Kaylan Sanders,12, test out some of the new instruments donated to Ebeneezer Middle School on Thursday afternoon.
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KEITH GEDAMKE / THE SUMTER ITEM
Johnnie Dinkins hands water to Calvin Hardy to be sent to New Orleans on Thursday afternoon. The pair are volunteering at St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church in an effort to collect food items from local churches to be sent as part of the relief effort.
Local church associations to send supplies to Louisiana BY ADRIENNE SARVIS adrienne@theitem.com Local church associations have come together this week to collect supplies for Louisiana disaster victims after multiple days of flooding in the Gulf Coast state. The Louisiana Disaster Relief Drive is a collaborative effort between Wateree Baptist Association, Lower Division; Sumter Association; Black River Association; and Pee Dee Association. Sumter residents remember the 1,000-year flood in October 2015 and Hurricane Hugo in 1989, so the group
made the effort to reach out to disaster victims in Louisiana, said Sammie Simmons, moderator for Wateree Baptist Association, Lower Division. “It’s certainly a worthwhile cause,” he said. “Something needs to be done.” Simmons said South Carolina residents should reach out to disaster victims because it is the right thing to do as Christians. Also, volunteers from Louisiana came to Sumter after the 1,000-year flood, he added. Simmons said the community came together in 2005 to deliver approximately 44,000 pounds of supplies to Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.
Crews of volunteers have collected supplies in shifts throughout the week, he said. Simmons said the relief group is accepting bottled water and other beverages, canned goods, toilet paper and paper towels. Other important items include diapers and cleaning supplies such as bleach, he said. There are a lot of children who have been affected, and the cleaning supplies will help people as they return home, he said. After reaching out to contacts in
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Ebenezer Middle School band earns $32K grant BY KONSTANTIN VENGEROWSKY konstantin@theitem.com
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