The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Death toll in Italy earthquake hits 250
Premier pledges to rebuild; critics say prevention lacking.
‘These tragedies keep happening because we don’t intervene.’ Armando Zambrano Nat. Council of Engineers
PESCARA DEL TRONTO, ITALY
As the search for survivors — ground on, Premier Matteo Renzi pledged new money and measures Thursday to rebuild quake-devastated central Italy amid mounting questions about why the seismic-prone country has failed to ensure its buildings can withstand such catastrophes.
A day after the quake killed 250 people, a 4.3-magnitude aftershock sent up plumes of thick, gray dust in the hardhit town of Amatrice. The aftershock crumbled already cracked buildings, rattled residents and closed clogged roads. It was only one of the more than 470 temblors that have followed Wednesday’s pre-dawn quake.
Firefighters and rescue crews using sniffer dogs worked in teams around the hard-hit areas in central Italy, pulling chunks of concrete, rock and metal from mounds of rubble where homes once stood. Rescuers refused to say when their work would shift from saving lives to recovering bodies, noting that one person was pulled alive from the rubble 72 hours after the 2009 quake in the nearby town of L’Aquila.
“We will work relentlessly until the last person is found, and make sure no one is trapped,” said Lorenzo Botti, a rescue team spokesman.
Most severely damaged in the quake were the tiny towns of Amatrice and Accumoli near Rieti, 60 miles northeast of Rome, and Pescara del Tronto, 15 miles further east.
Many were left homeless, their homes and apartments declared uninhabitable. Some survivors escorted by firefighters were allowed to go back inside homes briefly Thursday to get necessities for what will surely be an extended absence.
“Last night we slept in the car. Tonight, I don’t know,” said Nello Caffini as he carried belongings recovered from his sister-in-law’s home in Pescara del Tronto.
Charitable assistance began pouring into the earthquake zone Thursday. Church groups from a variety of Christian denominations, along with farmers offering donated peaches, pumpkins and plums, sent vans along the one-way road into Amatrice, which was already packed with emergency vehicles and trucks carrying sniffer dogs.
Other assistance was spiritual.
“When we learned that the hardest-hit place was here, we spoke to our bishop and he encouraged us to come here to comfort the families of the victims,” said a priest in Pescara del Tronto who gave his name only as Father Marco. “They have given us a beautiful example, because their pain did not take away their dignity.”
Italy’s civil protection agency said the death toll had risen to 250 by Thursday afternoon, with more than 180 of the fatalities in Amatrice. At least 365 other people were hospitalized, and 215 had been pulled alive from the rubble.
A Spaniard and five Romanians were among the dead, according to their governments.
There was no clear estimate of how many people might still be missing, since the rustic area was packed with summer vacationers. The Romanian government alone said 11 of its citizens were missing.
As the search effort continued, the soul-searching began.
Premier Renzi authorized a preliminary $56 million in emergency funding and the government canceled taxes for residents, measures that are just the start of what will be a long and costly rebuilding campaign. He announced a new initiative, “Italian Homes,” to answer years of criticism over shoddy construction across the country, which has the highest seismic hazard in Western Europe.
But he also said it was “absurd” to think that Italy could build completely quake-proof buildings.
“It’s illusory to think you can control everything,” he said at a news conference. “It’s difficult to imagine it could have been avoided simply using different building technology. We’re talking about medieval-era towns.”
Those old towns do not have to conform to the country’s anti-seismic building codes. Making matters worse, those codes often aren’t applied even when new buildings are built.
Armando Zambrano, the head of Italy’s National Council of Engineers, said the technology exists to reinforce old buildings and prevent such high death tolls.
While he estimated that it would cost up to $105 billion to reinforce all of the historic structures across the country, he said it would be possible to target efforts to the riskiest areas.
“We are able to prevent all these deaths. The problem is actually doing it,” he said. “These tragedies keep happening because we don’t intervene. After each tragedy we say we will act but then the weeks go by and nothing happens.”
Some experts estimate that 70 percent of Italy’s buildings aren’t built to anti-seismic standards, though not all are in high-risk areas.
Funding shortfalls and bureaucracy are obstacles to making the country’s buildings quake-resistant. A new law tries to encourage homeowners to make their homes earthquake-proof by reimbursing 65 percent of the cost over 10 years, but it isn’t enough to push Italians, who have endured years of economic stagnation, to put up the cash to make the upgrades.
Compounding the problem, many of the oldest and most vulnerable structures are in remote villages inhabited mostly by retirees with no cash to spare. In the cities, upgrades are stifled by the rules of condominium-style buildings that require the agreement of multiple owners for such investments.
“We’re among the best in the world in managing emergencies,” Renzi said, praising the men and women, many of them volunteers, who jump into action when crises hit. “But it’s not enough to be in the vanguard in emergencies.”
Geologists surveyed the damage Thursday to determine which buildings were still inhabitable, while Culture Ministry teams were fanning out to assess the damage to some of the region’s cultural treasures, especially its medieval-era churches.
Italian news reports said prosecutors investigating the quake were looking in particular into the collapse of Amatrice’s Romolo Capranica school, which was restored in 2012 using funds set aside after the last major quake in 2009.
In recent Italian quakes, some modern buildings — many of them public institutions — have been the deadliest. They included a university dormitory that collapsed in the 2009 L’Aquila quake, killing 11 students, and an elementary school that crumbled in San Giuliano di Puglia in 2002, killing 27 children — the town’s entire first-grade class.