Italy: tragedy in the Apennines
Amatrice, in the mountains northeast of Rome, is the birthplace of all’amatriciana spaghetti; and last week, it was full of visitors preparing to celebrate an annual festival dedicated to the dish. Now, the ancient hilltop town – close to the epicentre of the 6.2-magnitude earthquake that struck central Italy in the early hours of last Wednesday – lies in ruins. Some 80% of the buildings in its old centre were reduced to rubble by the quake and its aftershocks; and many of those still standing are so weakened, they will have to be pulled down. More than 2,000 of the town’s residents, and those of surrounding villages, are now living in tents; and as rescue workers continued their grim task over the weekend, picking their way through streets that resembled a war zone, the death toll in the region rose to more than 290.
Among the 21 children known to have died were an 18-month-old baby, whose mother had moved away after the 2009 L’aquila earthquake, but had come home for a holiday; and a nine-year-old girl, named Giulia, who was found locked in an embrace with her little sister in the rubble of her grandparents’ home in the devastated village of Pescara del Tronto. It seems that when masonry began to fall, she’d thrown herself onto four-year-old Giorgia, and wrapped her in her arms. Rescuers digging with their bare hands were able to pull Giorgia out alive, but they’d arrived too late for Giulia. A British boy, Marcos Burnett, 14, also died. He had been staying with a British couple, Will and Maria HennikerGotley, who were killed when the walls of the farmhouse they had restored, in the hamlet of Sommati, fell in. Italy’s prime minister, Matteo Renzi, has promised s234m to rebuild the area; but one resident of Pescara told The Times that she, for one, could never go back to a village that had become a “cemetery”.
The scandal is, at least some of these deaths may have been avoidable, said the FT. The central Apennines are one of the most seismically active regions in Europe; and Italy has strict antiseismic building codes. But in a country where an estimated 18% of buildings go up without planning permission, regulations are often flouted. Magistrates have now launched a probe into local building practices, with the focus on a newly rebuilt school in Amatrice that should have been quake-proof; and a bell tower in nearby Accumoli. The latter had just been restored, using funds for anti-seismic measures granted after a quake in 1997 – yet it collapsed, crushing a couple and their two children as they slept in the house next door. Small wonder that amid the tears there is also anger.