5.9 Quake Hits Athens, Leaving 36 Dead and Nearly 100 Missing
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ATHENS — Rescue teams and stunned residents used everything from cranes to garden tools Tuesday to dig for victims pinned under wreckage from the strongest earthquake to hit Athens in nearly a century--a 10-second shudder that claimed at least 36 lives and left close to 100 people missing.
But decades of progressively stricter building codes in Greece allowed Athens to ride out the magnitude 5.9 temblor with much less misery than followed a magnitude 7.4 quake that struck Aug. 17 in northwestern Turkey.
Most of the damage and casualties were concentrated in working-class and immigrant areas north of Athens, where construction standards were apparently lower or builders took shortcuts, some officials suggested. More than 100 buildings collapsed.
In central Athens, there was no apparent damage to ancient sites, including the Acropolis and the towering columns of the Temple of Zeus.
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