Helston and Truro based charity ShelterBox is working with an affiliate organisation in Milan to help survivors of an earthquake that tore apart several Central Italian villages on Wednesday morning.

The severe earthquake struck south-east of the Italian city of Perugia at 2.36am local time, killing more than 200 people, with an unknown number trapped beneath rubble in several villages.

The Cornish charity said it would be sending a team within 24 hours to the remote mountainous area of Italy that was struck by the quake, and has also suffered from a series of tremors since.

ShelterBox operations coordinator Phil Duloy is heading up initial assessment work, and is now making contact with local and government officials in Italy, with ShelterBox’s Rotary and affiliate colleagues, and with partner disaster relief organisations including the Red Cross.

If emergency or temporary shelter is needed for families and individuals made homeless in the disaster, ShelterBox has adequate supplies of tents and other equipment standing by in the UK and at other sites across Europe.

In recent years ShelterBox has deployed to Italian earthquakes twice. In 2012 it supplied 132 tents following a 6.0 quake, and in 2009 in Abruzzo when over 300 people died in a 6.3 quake the charity deployed 294 ShelterBoxes.