Children come to terms with trauma 291 people

Inside a shady tent in the middle of quake-hit Amatrice, a little girl hunches over a table drawing a picture of the soaring mountains overlooking this small Italian town.

For her, the drawing showed the only thing that remained constant after Wednesday’s earthquake which brought death and destruction a string of remote hilltop towns and villages in central Italy.

Not far from the morgue where families have been identifying their dead, a group of children are playing in a tent set up by Save the Children, using drawing as a way to express the trauma they have experienced.

“This little girl drew the mountains and she told us that they were the mountains of Amatrice, the most beautiful in the world,” Save the Children spokeswoman Danilo Giannese said.

“Then she said; ‘Everything collapsed, except the mountains’.”

That drawing had particularly affected those working for the NGO, which has set up a play area where children can recover some sense of the normalcy which has been lost through the traumatic events of recent days.

The idea is to create a space where children can be with their peers and express themselves through play and drawing, under the supervision of educators trained to handle emergency situations.

It also gives the parents some time to process their grief, to deal with pressing problems and start planning for the future, knowing their children are enjoying a bit of peace in a safe place, the charity says.

“These are children who have suffered shock: suddenly, they had to abandon their homes and since then, they have only seen destruction,” explains Giannese.

Place of safety

Many of the local children were sent away to relatives or friends in the wake of Wednesday’s deadly quake, in which 291 people died, while others remain in hospital.

But around 15 children are currently visiting the tent which is in a camp set up by the Civil Protection agency.

Inside the large light-grey tent, the children feel at home.

Sitting on chunky plastic chairs around a small round table, several children between the ages of 4 to 8 take crayons out of a box and start drawing.

Nearby are red plastic boxes of toy cars and Lego. Outside is a small blackboard easel with a chalk picture scrawled on it.

“It’s a safe place, a protected place, where they can also find a bit of peace rather than being outside in all this dust,” explains a volunteer wearing a red top with a white Save the Children logo on it.

were killed in Wednesday’s earthquake in Amatrice, Italy, with the death toll expected to climb.