Earthquake funerals, inquiry start
Italy held a state funeral yesterday for 35 victims of last week’s earthquake on a day of national mourning that dawned with ground along the country’s central mountain spine still trembling.
With the death toll at 290, President Sergio Mattarella and Matteo Renzi, the prime minister, led dignitaries of church and state at a requiem mass at a sports arena in the town of Ascoli Piceno.
Relatives of the dead sat on chairs next to the coffins or knelt on the floor, their arms resting on the varnished wood. Some mourners clutched framed photographs of loved ones.
In the rows of coffins were laid out the small caskets of an 18-month-old baby and a nine-yearold girl – two of the 21 children known to have died.
Bishop Giovanni D’Ercole told the story of nine-year-old Giulia, whose body was found after she apparently tried to protect her younger sister, Giorgia, who was pulled alive from the rubble of their home.
‘‘The older one, Giulia, was sprawled over the smaller one, Giorgia. Giulia, dead, Giorgia, alive. They were in an embrace,’’ he said.
As the names of the dead were read out, hundreds of people gathered outside the sports hall broke into prolonged applause. The people of the stricken area refuse to read the last rites for their devastated community.
‘‘We will rebuild it right here, as beautiful as it was before,’’ said Sergio Pirozzi, the mayor of Amatrice, a medieval hilltop town near the epicentre of the earthquake that is still crumbling under aftershocks.
Amatrice stands amid forested mountains and green valleys laced by pure rivers. It was a haven for visitors and a pioneer of a new Italian economy built on agritourism, organic olive oil and high-speed internet.
Deserted and dust-cloaked last week, its homes were in ruins. Those buildings that were still standing had huge cracks splitting their walls.
It is likely that Amatrice, a town of 2000, will be rebuilt but some of the 60 hamlets dotted around it are likely to join the ranks of Italy’s many post-disaster ‘‘ghost towns’’.
Public anger has focused on the collapse of a school in Amatrice supposedly quakeproofed at a cost of more than (NZ$1m).
Prosecutors opened a criminal inquiry into the fate of 115 collapsed buildings in the area. Many were built ‘‘with more sand than cement,"Giuseppe Saieva, the chief prosecutor, said.
‘‘They call it fate but if these buildings had been constructed as they are in Japan, they wouldn’t have collapsed.’’
The Italian government has said that there must be an end to the cycle of grief, anger and resignation that has marked every big earthquake in recent years.
‘‘Italians need to realise that the country is permanently at risk and for the first time the government is saying that we need to do prevention and not just reconstruction,’’ said Francesco Peduto, president of the National Council of Geologists.
‘‘The top priority is to quakeproof public buildings like schools and hospitals,’’ he said.
Renzi has declared a new emphasis on safeguarding property.
‘‘We’re not going to achieve in seven months what hasn’t been achieved in 70 years,’’ he said. ‘‘What’s important is a change of mentality.
‘‘I don’t consider the bill for protection a cost, I consider it an investment.’’
The anger has not detracted from admiration for the dedication of the emergency services and the security forces.