One woman was killed and seven people are unaccounted for after a 3.6-magnitude earthquake struck the resort island of Ischia late Monday, Italian officials said, Fox news reported.
Giovanni Vittozzi of the Carabinieri’s civil protection department told Italy’s Sky TG24 that several buildings in Ischia’s Casamicciola town have collapsed.
At least one hotel and parts of a hospital were evacuated. A doctor at the Rizzoli hospital, Roberto Calloca, told Sky TG24 that some 20 people were being treated for minor injuries at a makeshift emergency room set up on the hospital grounds.
Vittozzi said the Rizzoli hospital has been evacuated, except for patients on respirators.
Officials feared others may be trapped in the rubble of the collapsed buildings.
Italy’s national volcanology institute said the temblor, at the peak of tourist season, struck just before 9 p.m. local time, just as many people were having dinner, cutting electricity and sending panicked residents and tourists into the streets. News reports suggested the hardest-hit area was Casamicciola, on the northern part of the island.
Civil protection crews, already on the island in force to fight the forest fires that have been ravaging southern Italy, were checking the status of the buildings that suffered damage.
Together with the nearby island of Capri, Ischia is a favorite island getaway for the European jet-set, famed in particular for its thermal waters. Casamicciola was the epicenter of an 1883 earthquake that killed more than 2,000 people.