Three years ago the earth trembled in L’Aquila; it was April 6th at 3:32 AM. The earthquake lasted for 25
seconds and it left behind a disfigured city, 309 dead, thousands of injured, thousands of homeless and countless tears.
Three years after that day the city
still resembles a ghost city, with only a few cafes and restaurants open, most
of the shops still closed. The military is controlling that no cars go to the
city centre and that no people venture among the ruins.
When I arrived in L’Aquila
on a cold Sunday afternoon in January, a group of men advised me to park the car outside
the main centre: “Don’t go up there; the military doesn’t let anybody pass;
we’re still living here like in Santiago de Chile and we have no idea why”.
L’Aquila is a dead city
right now; having been there before the earthquake, I found it hard to
understand that I was in the same place. I remembered the city as being lively,
glimpses on the majestic mountains at every corner, beautiful buildings, most
of them, today, in ruins.
“There had been many foreshocks,” recalls
a lady eating next to my table in one of the few open restaurants, who happens to be the owner of the very building we are in. “Just a few days before the
earthquake a commission of scientists had come here and told everybody that
there was no risk for a ‘big one’. One has to laugh not to cry.”
She says: “We were allowed to reopen the restaurant and the cafe next door a year ago, but we still
cannot move back in our apartment, which is on the fourth floor because it is
not considered safe and there is no gas supply for private households.”
Her family lives out
of the city, like everyone else: “Yes,” she says, “the city has completely
relocated and it seems there’s no hope we can move back soon.”
The reason is that most of
the buildings in the city centre are of historical value and therefore under
the protection of the Ministry of Culture: rebuilding operations follow detailed - governmental - procedures.
She says: “It is sad that
people may think that we, as inhabitants of the city, should do more, that we
should rebuild L’Aquila whereas the truth is that we can’t. Unfortunately we
often read about some involvement of the mafia; there’s been so much money
pumped in, all gone in the pockets of some politician, or some ‘study group’,
or some ‘expert’.”
Unfortunately, as Natalia, a bar owner, tells me, “there is always someone who is getting rich thanks to us”. “We are lucky because we
could reopen our activity ‘officially’ already in December 2009. Unofficially
we were working already a few weeks after the earthquake, sneaking in from the
back door because this is our family business, the only one we have and we
couldn’t afford not to work.”
Not everybody has been as
lucky and walking on the small, barely lit streets, a profound sense of
emptiness is tangible.
Natalia says: “I find it
hard to understand that everyone has forgotten about us; what we want is to be
able to rebuild our city, we want to reopen our hotels, welcome tourists, do
our Christmas shopping in the old town and not in a sterile shopping centre in
the suburbs.”
The aftermath of the
earthquake has been disgracefully handled; for some people, the only decent thing the Government did, was building real houses for the homeless. For others, that money could have been spent in starting the reconstruction earlier. But, as someone I talked to pointed out: “If
things would have gone that way, this would be our third winter in a container.”
Last night, at 3:32 AM the bells of the main Church in L'Aquila rang for 309 times, as a sign that the community is not forgetting those who died three years ago.
Let's hope that L'Aquila - which also means eagle in Italian - will be freed from her cage of ruins and debris and will be able to fly, free, once again.
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