Italy mourns its quake dead
State funeral held for 35 of the 290 who died in tragedy
ASCOLI PICENO, ITALY // Italy observed a day of mourning yesterday as funerals were held for dozens of the 290 people who died in Wednesday’s earthquake.
President Sergio Mattarella and premier Matteo Renzi joined grieving families at a state funeral for 35 of the victims. Mourners wept among flower-bedecked coffins – of young and old – at a makeshift chapel in the Ascoli Piceno town community gym. Bishop Giovanni D’Ercole urged them to rebuild their communities.
“Don’t be afraid to cry out your suffering, but please do not lose courage,” he said.
“Together we will rebuild our houses and churches, together above all we will restore life to our communities, the village bells will ring once more.”
Hundreds of people gathered outside the gym in support.
“It is a great tragedy,” said resident Gina Razzetti. “There are no words to describe it. Each one of us has our pain inside. We are thinking about the families who lost relatives, who lost their homes, who lost everything.”
The magnitude 6.2 earthquake struck at 3.36am that day and was felt across central Italy, as far as Rome, 170 kilometres away.
The death toll has steadily risen as rescue workers continued to find bodies buried under rubble.
Nobody has been found alive in the ruins since Wednesday, and hopes have faded of finding more survivors.
There were at least 16 foreigners among the dead – 10 Romanians, three Britons and one each from Canada, El Salvador and Spain.
Sixteen Romanians remained unaccounted for.
Emergency services believed they accounted for everyone in the outlying hamlets to the north of Amatrice – some of which were so badly damaged there were doubts they would be inhabited again.
It was the town of Amatrice that bore the brunt of destruction with 230 fatalities. Eleven died in nearby Accumoli and 49 in Arquata del Toronto.
Yesterday’s mass funeral involved most of the dead from Arquata del Tronto, 25 kilometres to the south- west of Ascoli Piceno.
Other funerals took place on Friday, with the majority to come.
One of the coffins yesterday was for nine- year- old Giulia Rinaldo, who used her body to shield her younger sister, Giorgia, from harm.
Giorgia, whose fourth birthday was yesterday, was one of the last to be pulled alive from the rubble. She was recovering in a hospital next door to the gym where the funerals took place. Bishop D’Ercole recounted how Giorgia was found in her sister’s arms.
“The older sister, Giulia, was spread over the smaller one, they were in an embrace,” he said.
“Life and death came face to face and for Giorgia, life won.”
A note, apparently left by one of the rescue workers on her coffin read: “Ciao, little one. Sorry that we got there too late.”
Many of the victims were either elderly or very young, like 18-month-old Marisol Piermarini.
The town was full of children visiting grandparents for the last of the summer holidays.
“The melancholy grips your heart, you feel a sense of weakness, of depression,” said Fiore Ciotto, a resident of Ascoli Piceno.
“Something like this weakens you physically and mentally.”
With emotions raw, some fam- ilies chose not to take up the offer of state funerals.
“Why attend? To listen to politicians? They always say the same thing – that they stand with us and that it must never happen again, always the same thing,” said one woman after identifying the body of a relative in Amatrice.
The night before the funeral brought more fear with a series of aftershocks.
The strongest, at 4.50am, had a magnitude of 4.2, according to the United States Geological Survey, while the Italian geophysics institute measured it at 4.0.
The Italian institute and other authorities said satellite images showed that the earthquake caused the ground below Accumoli to sink 20 centimetres.
About 400 people were still in hospital, some with life-threatening injuries.
Many of those left homeless spent their nights in tents. The government has pledged to support immediate reconstruction.
Mr Renzi has declared a state of emergency for the regions affected, releasing an initial €50 million ( Dh205.6m) in emergency aid.
The total rebuilding operation is forecast to cost more than €1 billion.