Evening Standard

Quake town holds mass funeral for 200 victims

- Michael Howie

THE Italian town at the centre of last week’s devastatin­g earthquake was today preparing to lay to rest more than 200 victims as the families of three Britons killed in the disaster mourn their loved ones.

Thousands were expected to gather amid the ruins in the central hilltop town of Amatrice when a mass state funeral is held this evening. It will take place on the edge of Amatrice’s obliterate­d medieval centre in the grounds of a Catholic retreat for the elderly. Constructi­on crews worked through the night to build a tent complex to host the funeral after residents denounced the government’s original plan to hold it in an airport hangar. Authoritie­s had intended to stage the service for more than twothirds of the 292 who died in Wednesday’s quake in the provincial capital of Rieti and let survivors watch it on TV.

Among those who died were 14-yearold Marcos Burnett and Maria and Will Henniker-Gotley, all from London. Friends of Mr and Mrs Henniker-Gotley, from Stockwell, today told how they were apparently found in bed in each other’s arms.

Consultant Mr Henniker-Gotley, 55, and his charity worker wife, 51, were at their holiday home in the hamlet of Sommati when it was destroyed in seconds. Marcos, their son Jack’s best friend, who went to Wetherby School in Marylebone, had arrived for a week’s holiday with his family 13 hours earlier. His parents, Anne-Louise and Simon Burnett, were both taken to hospital and their daughter also survived.

Barbara Digiacomo, 43, who knew Mr and Mrs Henniker-Gotley well and has a holiday home near their property, said: “I heard they were found hugging. I don’t think they had the chance to realise [what was happening].” Italian authoritie­s said the magnitude-6.2 quake was the equivalent of 20,000 atomic bombs detonating at its epicentre.

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