A Crisis Unit Races To Rescue a Heritage

AMATRICE, Italy — The rescuers worked tirelessly under a scorching sun. They formed a human chain, passing from hand to hand all they could salvage from the destruction of the earthquake. They had to work quickly, fearing the precariousness of an adjacent splintered building.

It was not lives they were saving on this recent day, but the history of Amatrice itself. Working alongside firefighters, the team included a specialized art squad of Italy’s carabinieri police. At least 296 people died in the violent shaking on August 24. Many more were left homeless and injured. But those devastating minutes also placed at risk thousands of books amassed since past earthquakes destroyed this town in 1639 and 1703. There were also countless pieces of art and artifacts in churches and museums across the earthquake zone.

“For now, we have secured a trace of Amatrice’s past — that’s the principal thing, that the community has preserved its history,” said Maria Letizia Sebastiani, the Culture Ministry official who oversaw that afternoon’s recovery

The crisis unit of the Culture Ministry was created after an earthquake engulfed central Italy in 1997, damaging a number of monuments. It has since been deployed in dozens of disasters in Italy and abroad.

It was dispatched in the first hours after the earthquake. Since then, squads of rescuers have entered churches, museums and town halls. Paintings, statues and ecclesiastical objects have been bundled and sent to what amount to field hospitals for art and artifacts, for preservation and an early evaluation of the damage.

Many buildings in Amatrice and elsewhere are still in danger of collapse, and weeks after the quake, aftershocks continued to strain already-weakened structures. The teams photograph and document artifacts, and recover what can be easily removed with the assistance of firefighters and civil protection rescuers.

The crisis unit’s immediate task was to safeguard monuments as best as possible, “to halt any further deterioration,” said Prefect Fabio Carapezza Guttuso, the unit’s leader. The unit has emptied Amatrice’s municipal museum, as well as some churches. But thousands of artifacts still need to be salvaged, many in remote areas. “One by one, we will get to them all,” he said.

Some priorities were identified, the prefect said, like an 18th- century replica of the Shroud of Turin, the linen that faithful believe wrapped the body of Jesus. It was removed from a church in Arquata del Tronto. A small cameo of the Virgin Mary, known as the Madonna of Filetta, Amatrice’s patron saint, was also recovered from the rubble of the church of Sant’Agostino and was displayed during the town’s communal funeral.

Luca Cari, a spokesman for Italy’s firefighters, said that in the face of devastating loss, “what’s left has even more meaning.”