Monday's earthquake in central Italy left 92 dead, 1,500 injured and some 70,000 homeless, officials said twelve hours after the disaster, Italy's biggest quake in almost 30 years.
The 6.2 magnitude quake, which ripped through Abruzzo capital L'Aquila and neighbouring towns, came at 03:33 local (01:33 GMT).
One foreign national has so far been found among those killed, a female student from the Czech republic.
Some 4,000 rescuers were at work and the European Union's disaster fund had been activated, said Premier Silvio Berlusconi who cancelled a trip to Moscow to be at the scene.
Helicopters were taking the most badly injured to hospital while many minor casualties were driving, or being driven, to Rome.
Some 2,000 tents were being put up for the homeless, each able to house 8-10 people, empty couchette trains were also being made available, and the fire service thought it could find temporary lodgings for 2,000 more, Berlusconi said.
Abruzzo Governor Gianni Chiodi said some 10,000 of the displaced could be moved to hotels on the coast.
Berlusconi urged citizens not to stay indoors because of the risk of aftershocks or new quakes.
The earthquake was Italy's worst since 2,570 people were killed southeast of Naples in 1980.
The two most recent big quakes were in 1997 when 11 died in a tremor that damaged churches in Assisi and in 2002 when 27 school children and one teacher were killed in the collapse of a school east of Naples.
