Italian earthquake survivors await relief, reconstruction

Italy is no stranger to earthquakes. The response to the 6.2 magnitude quake in northeast Italy’s Apennines has been swift. Three small towns have been seriously damaged. Despite being hampered by landslides and collapsed roads, some 4,000 rescuers rushed to the scene. Of course, for those whose lives had been shaken to pieces around them, help could not have come fast enough. Surrounded by the dead and trapped, for an hour or two they had only their bare hands to scrabble frantically at the rubble. The death toll has passed 250 and given the many people apparently missing, the number of dead is clearly going to rise. In the immediate days after any such quake, the focus is on trying to find survivors. Past experience shows that some trapped victims can stay alive for several days providing they have access to some source of water – even a dripping pipe will do. But a week from now, the rescue phase of the operation will be effectively over and it will become a sad and difficult search for bodies. Many of the collapsed buildings that must be searched remain highly unstable. There is an ever-present danger of standing walls falling in, all the greater because of the continuing aftershocks. Already thoughts are turning to rebuilding these shattered communities. But this is where Italy’s response to disasters tails off and tails off dramatically. In April 2009, a 5.8 magnitude quake destroyed large parts of the ancient town of L’Aquila in central Italy, killing 300 people. The then prime minister Silvio Berlusconi made the plight of the townsfolk his very public priority. He flew in by helicopter regularly to see first how the rescue was going and then to oversee the efforts at reconstruction. He originally proposed that L’Aquila be largely abandoned and a completely new town be built nearby. This idea was angrily rejected by the townspeople. Some suspected that this refusal impacted subsequent rebuilding efforts. A whole raft of different inspections by geologists, structural engineers, archaeologists and planners were imposed on the reconstruction process. The result is that fully seven years later, work has still not begun on some properties or has been halted because it did not conform to one standard or another.  One inhabitant, whose home is only just now being rebuilt, complained bitterly that priority had been given to restoring and repairing ancient churches and other public buildings. There clearly are valid bureaucratic reasons behind the need for caution in reconstruction for instance ensuring, as far as possible, that restored mediaeval buildings have some sort of built-in resistance to future earthquakes.  But for the process to have lasted nearly 10 years seems inexcusable. Past Italian earthquakes have also been notable for the amount of central government aid that did not find its way to its designated recipients. Gross inefficiencies in officialdom are exploited for corruption. In the wake of a 1980 quake in southern Italy, which killed over 2,700 people and left 400,000 homeless, it was finally discovered that organized criminal gangs were claiming compensation and rebuilding funds for scores of properties that had never existed. The victims of this latest tragedy in the Apennines will understandably be hoping that this time Italian officials responsible for reconstruction will move just as swiftly as the rescuers who rushed  to their aid on Wednesday.