Daily Times

ATHENS: The Greek island of Lesbos on Tuesday laboured to pick up the pieces after a 6.3-magnitude earthquake gutted a village, killing a woman and leaving over 15 injured. The tremor, felt as far as Athens and in neighbouring Turkey, mainly struck the southern Lesbos village of Vrisa. Officials said most of the village’s old stone homes collapsed or were damaged. Rescue crews recovered the body of a 43-year-old woman in the ruins of her house some five hours after the quake struck after 1220 GMT. “Seventy to eighty percent of the homes in the village have collapsed. The destruction is very extensive in this village,” police minister Nikos Toskas told state radio ANA. “Fortunately, damage to other villages in the surrounding area is minimal,” Toskas said. Two people remain hospitalised. A government council under Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is meeting today to decide reconstruction and emergency accommodation for those left homeless at Vrisa. “Great attention is needed because there could be a strong aftershocks, and damaged walls will not stand,” the head of Greece’s quake protection authority Efthymios Lekkas told Skai TV. “Most of these homes need to be torn down,” he said. The US Geological Survey put the quake at 6.3 on the moment magnitude scale.