Grief and trauma as hopes fade
Foodies are getting behind Italy’s quake relief efforts as the nation declares today a national day of mourning.
On a bench in a camp outside what was left of Amatrice, Elsa sat and cried. Her home had collapsed in the earthquake that reduced the hilltop town to rubble, she said. She had spent the last two nights here, in a tent.
A blessed relief: her children had survived. But her aunt and many of her friends were among the 194 people who died in Amatrice when the powerful 6.2-magnitude quake struck.
‘‘Everything is destroyed, everything is broken,’’ said Elsa, 66, who asked that her surname not be used. ‘‘We have nothing.
‘‘Amatrice is finished. I wish I had died, too. I’m an old woman. What do I have to live for?’’
As powerful aftershocks damaged key access roads yesterday and hopes faded that more survivors would be found, the government declared today a national day of mourning for the 267 people who died in Amatrice and its neighbouring towns.
The head of the civil protection agency, Immacolata Postiglione, insisted that the search for survivors would continue. ‘‘The units doing the searches and rescues, including with dogs, are absolutely fully active,’’ she said.
But while 215 people have been pulled alive from the rubble, no survivors have been found since Thursday, and rescue workers conceded that there was very little chance of it happening now.
The mayor of Amatrice, Sergio Pirozzi, said that three days after the quake, finding someone alive ‘‘would take a miracle’’.
Fifteen people were still missing, Pirozzi said, and workers would continue digging until all the bodies had been recovered.
‘‘I want to thank all the volunteers,’’ he said. ‘‘I am eternally grateful – they have saved hundreds of lives.’’
Already weakened buildings crumbled further after the biggest of yesterday’s tremors, measured at magnitude 4.7, while damage to two vital road bridges risked leaving the town ‘‘without any connection’’ to the outside world, Pirozzi said.
Nearly 1000 aftershocks have rocked the stricken area straddling the regions of Umbria, Marche and Lazio in the central Apennine mountains since the original quake on Wednesday.
I have nowhere else to go. But what are we going to do when winter arrives? Elsa, earthquake survivor
Most of the confirmed deaths were in Amatrice, where 193 people died, including three Britons. Six Romanians, a Canadian, a Spaniard and a Salvadoran were also killed, and more than 360 people are being treated in hospital.
More than 2100 people are sleeping under canvas in tent cities.
Luca, 48, a volunteer with Italian aid organisation ANPAS, had spent the past two days setting up one such camp for 250 people outside Amatrice.
‘‘They’re traumatised,’’ he said. ‘‘Here at least they can sleep, have three meals a day, shower. And maybe start rebuilding their sense of community.’’
For many, however, the only thing binding the community together is grief.
‘‘The pain is communal, the tragedy is collective,’’ said a 40-year-old man who only gave his last name, Torrino.
Standing not far from the camp, he held his young daughter’s hand as he surveyed a crumbling house. The front wall had fallen away completely, and Torrino pointed out an exposed bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen. ‘‘Eight people in my family died,’’ he said.
Many more families were gathered outside a makeshift morgue set up by Italian authorities for relatives to identify their dead. They stood anxiously, holding each other, waiting for the worst. When the identity of another body was confirmed, entire families broke down in tears, men and women openly weeping.
Waiting anxiously nearby was Mario Cortoni, 60, who runs a refugee organisation and lives 10 kilometres from Amatrice. Thirty Kurdish, Afghan and Pakistani refugees had been living in Amatrice, he said, and all but one survived.
Cortoni was waiting to find out if a 27-year-old refugee from Afghanistan was among the dead.
‘‘I’m not hopeful,’’ he said. ‘‘He was such a smart guy. He had escaped war and persecution, came to Italy nine months ago. And now look what’s happened. It’s just horrible.’’
Asked where she would be sleeping, Elsa said: ‘‘This tent. I have nowhere else to go. But what are we going to do when winter arrives?’’
As other residents passed, she asked them about their families. More often than not, her questions were met with a shake of the head. ‘‘So many dead,’’ she said.
Meanwhile, food lovers and chefs in Italy and beyond are urging restaurants to serve up more pasta all’amatriciana in a move to support the quake-hit hometown of the hearty dish.
The rustic food, made of tomato sauce with pork jowl and topped with pecorino cheese, comes from Amatrice. Residents in the medieval hilltop town had been preparing to host a yearly food festival this weekend dedicated to the dish.
Italian food blogger and graphic designer Paolo Campana has launched an appeal, saying on Facebook that ‘‘we have to move fast’’.
‘‘Pasta all’amatriciana is a symbol,’’ he said. ‘‘So I decided to use this symbol to help.’’
He has asked restaurants to put the dish on their menus and donate €2 (NZ$3) per dish sold to the Italian Red Cross.
Since his appeal, other voluntary initiatives have been cropping up in Italy, even in regions where the dish is not typically eaten. The effort has also gone international.
British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver said on Facebook that he and 700 chefs at his Jamie’s Italian UK restaurants, an international chain, would be serving pasta all’amatriciana and donating £2 (NZ$3.60) per dish sold towards firefighters, camps, food, clothing and medical assistance.
Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food International, which promotes traditional cooking with sustainable ingredients, has also called on restaurateurs worldwide ‘‘to put the symbolic dish of this devastated town on their menus’’.
The heart of the yearly pasta festival was the Hotel Roma and its restaurant. Now the hotel is in ruins, with several people lying dead under its rubble.
‘‘Let’s hope that [Amatrice] will be reborn again,’’ Luca Palombini, the assistant chef at Hotel Roma, said from the San Salvatore Hospital in L’Aquila, where he is recovering from a broken foot. ‘‘[The spaghetti all’] Amatriciana will be even better.’’