New | Crucial fault line runs up spine of quake-prone Italy

An earthquake devastating villages in central Italy Wednesday triggered along a fault line that has tormented the Italian peninsula for centuries, making the country among the most quake-prone regions of Europe.

The magnitude 6.2 quake, which left at least 73 people dead, occurred squarely within a band of “high seismic hazard” running along the axis of the north-south Apennines mountain range, according to the US Geological Survey.

Architecture is centuries old in the region, placing it at even higher risk of damage and deaths.

“Many of the towns feature stone construction including a deep history of architecture dating back to Roman and in some cases Etruscan times,” the US Geological Survey said in a statement.

The event fell squarely between two relatively recent earthquakes along the same fault line. Thirty miles northwest of there back in 1997, a magnitude 6.0 quake left 11 dead and destroyed 80,000 homes in the Marche and Umbria regions of Italy.

In 2009, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake levelled the village of L’Aquila, leaving 295 dead, 1,000 injured and 55,000 homeless. The village is 20 miles to the southeast of Wednesday’s destruction.