Earthquake

Earth Tremors in Abruzzo

Property destruction and death in L’Aquila, over 200 fatalities, 1500 injured, 30 thousand homeless

Monday, April 6, 2009. At exactly 3:32 AM a violent earthquakes struck Abruzzo and central Italy. The epicenter is located just outside the city center only three miles below the earth’s surface. Seismographs register 5.8 on the Richter, about 9 on the Mercalli, scales. More than 26 communal cities are devastated.

In addition to L’Aquila, the nearby towns and villages of Santo Stefano di Sessano, Castelvecchio Calvisio, San Pio, Villa Sant’Angelo, Fossa, Ocre, San Demetrio ne’ Vestini and the central portion of Altopiaqno delle Rocche are hard hit. The situation is especially dire not only in the provincial capital of L’Aquila but also in the outlying communities of Onna, almost completely flattened and Paganica, where dozens of victims remain buried in the deep rubble. The official death toll has climbed to greater than 200 with more than 1500 injured and 30 thousand homeless.

The scene from a helicopter above the earthquakes center is an unreal one. L’Aquila’s devastation fans out for miles in every direction and reveals a ravaged Regional Capital that is eerily silent and deserted. The empty streets stand chillingly barren and noiseless, the silence broken only by the occasional roar of emergency vehicles and the increasingly faint and infrequent pleas of the victims below praying that help will reach them in time. The flower buds on the city’s trees in the past have hearkened the new season’s reawakening but now serve only to further heighten the contrast between the first signs of spring and the now omnipresent tocsins of death and carnage.

L’Aquila was almost completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1703 in which one half of the city’s population perished. The current quake has again brought tragedy to the city both in terms of the high number of victims as well as the irreparable damage that has been done to L’Aquila’s cultural and architectural treasures including basilicas, noble palaces and archaeological treasures. At least one third of the buildings are completely uninhabitable. Baroque buildings made of fortress like walls have stood firmly for centuries but have now crumbled as a result of the violent seismic shocks that have repeatedly struck the city. Incomprehensible is the damage to newer buildings, including recently upgraded and renovated student dormitories first built in he 1970’s and the San Salvatore hospital completed only just nine years ago. These structures were specifically constructed with reinforced cement in a manner so as to withstand quakes of this nature. But someting evidently went amiss and the giant edifices crumbled without warning. The prefecture’s own administrative offices, again specifically constructed to withstand such quakes and to serve as emergency centers when necessary, now lie in ruins and are virtually unusable.

The new quarter of Pettino located at the quakes epicenter, stands as testimony to the errors committed when speculation and financial considerations are allowed to take precedence over common sense and concern for the safety and well being of the citizens. The combined effects of poor craftsmanship, lack of quality control, inferior building materials, a blind eye to applicable building regulations, and infrequent inspections together served to create structures that had been touted as earthquake resistant but in reality fell far short of this stated goal.

Civil protection operations were initiated almost immediately following the earthquakes first shocks. Priority was given to locating and rescuing the many victims who lie trapped in the omnipresent rubble. In the first 20 hours following the quake rescue teams working at a frantic pace were able to locate and extricate more than 100 survivors from the deadly mounds of piled debris. Dozens more were saved in the hours and days that followed. Hearty and competent crews worked nonstop for days in their valiant efforts. Heroic individuals from the Italian military forces along with firemen, police forces, civil protection workers, Red Cross employees and volunteers from all over Italy bravely formed a unified force while working together in this dangerous but rewarding endeavor. These angels of salvation truly deserve our admiration and extreme gratitude.

By the grace of God, only a very small number of the 70 thousand people without homes in the days immediately following the first quakes were left without shelter of some kind. Innkeepers throughout Abruzzo and along the Adriatic Coast (where the risk of a quake is much lower) opened their doors and their arms to these masses of weary and heartbroken compatriots. Tent cities strategically located closer to L’Aquila itself now appear to be functioning adequately. The gravity of the situation has been accepted by the people of Abruzzo, Italy, and the entire world. Individuals and civic organizations all over the globe have come together to provide funds and materials needed to support the ongoing rescue efforts. The people of the United States have offered to take the lead in restoring the city’s churches, the gracious people of Spain will play an important role in reconstruction of L’Aquila’s Spanish fortress.

Far too often in Italy the television newscasts, newspapers, journalists and intellectual elite encourage people to focus on the social and political aspects of the situation while making the banal claim “everything is political”. An overemphasis on this worldview however, blinds us to other important aspects that need be addressed. Earthquakes serve as reminders that our existence brings daily struggles, challenges abound, and we would do well not to take our happiness for granted as it can be shattered at any moment. Real wisdom comes from acknowledging the the precarious nature of our mortality, from the realization that even those things that seem most solid (the “brick’s” and buildings in which we choose to invest our money) are also transitory and ephemeral objects as we pass through this mortal world.

The tragic scenes of family members recovering the bodies of their lost loved ones will forever remain etched in the collective consciousness of a dazed and saddened Italian people. Perhaps most poignant was the hapless mother unearthed with her arms clung tightly around the corpses of her two small children, their mother’s vain gesture of love they carrying them forward into eternal darkness. A second young mother died along with her husband and son while hurrying to to hospital where she had expected to give birth to a second child. A physician, while attempting to resuscitate other victims, made the harrowing discovery that his own young child had perished. The rugby player who, without regard to his own safety and in the presence of highly dangerous natural gas leaks, made two rescue trips through the twisted remains, each time hoisting on his back an elderly person (one of whom required an accompanying oxygen tank for survival). Countless heroic deeds, too numerable to mention, carried out by both rescue workers and individual citizens.

The recent earthquake in L’Aquila is stronger than the one that struck Umbria in 1997. The damage has also been more severe due to the fact that the quake’s effects were concentrated on a much smaller area (only the province of L’Aquila experience any significant damage) containing a large population living in a dense urban center.

Now is the time for solidarity in supporting the survivors of this tragedy, the homeless, those left without transportation, the multitudes who have lost virtually all their earthly possessions. All of us must answer this moral calling to reach out and to assist our fellow countrymen so hard by this fateful tragedy. We must provide shelter and more to these many victims. We can and will restore the beautiful and historical city of L’Aquila which has for so many years stood as a beacon of the culture of Abruzzo and the industrious nature of its indigenous population.

Motivated both by fear and by necessity, holding camps have now sprung in the suburbs surrounding L’Aquila’s historic city center. These temporary communities should in no way be considered sustainable in their present form. The good citizens want and deserve to have their great city restored to its previous splendor. This needs to be done in a manner that both respects the city’s historical and cultural beauty while at the same time providing the maximum protection from natural disasters such as the one that has most recently befallen us.

Nicolino Farina
Translation by Stephen Mark Ulissi

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Villa in Abruzzo Travazzano