Originally published April 20, 2009
There’s a rumbling in the ground, a couple of seconds of shaking. It gives me one hell of a fright, but then I notice that the hotel receptionist doesn’t even bother to look up from behind his desk. He’s evidently grown used to the tremors which continue to strike L’Aquila in the region of Abruzzo in central Italy several times a day.
“Around 3 on the Richter scale,” he tells me afterwards, a far cry from the 6.3 magnitude earthquake which struck the region on April 6 with devastating ferocity. I relax again, and before long, I’m hardly taking any notice of the tremors myself, or that’s what I try to tell myself. Yet that night I sleep with my hard hat next to my bed, my boots ready to be jumped into instantly and more clothing than I’d normally wear in the bed, and not because the room is cold.
My hotel is right outside the old city walls, only a couple of hundred metres away from scenes of indescribable devastation. However, if it weren’t for the countless fire engines, police vehicles, army trucks going around all the time, and the tent cities which have sprouted up in every available large open space, you’d never know the region has just been struck by one of Italy’s worst natural disasters in years.
Most of the destruction in L’Aquila itself is concentrated in the historic centre of the town, a place of narrow cobbled streets and sweeping piazzas, beautiful churches rich in art and history. Other parts of the town also suffered damage, but it’s not so evident at first glance because it’s spaced out.
The city centre is off limits to everyone apart from the emergency services, and a steady trickle of residents who are allowed in, in small numbers and under escort, to retrieve personal belongings such as documents, jewellery and money, as well as journalists, also under civil protection escort. The fire-fighters who drive the residents to their homes do not allow them into the houses. The residents have to tell them where their important possessions are, and the fire-fighters go and find them. The residents have to apply to go to their homes, and often have to wait several days till their name is called. The gathering points on the peripheries of the centre are full of people with empty suitcases, holdalls or boxes, patiently waiting their turn.
People appear calm, resigned to their fate. It was a very different story on the night of April 6. Tremors had been shaking the city since December, but few people thought to leave. A few who did mere days before the big one were lucky. Most of the population however was asleep in their beds on that soon-to-be catastrophic night. When the shaking started at 3.32am, accompanied by a terrifying rumble from deep in the earth, buildings shook not from side to side, as one normally expects during an earthquake, but up and down. In those fateful twenty seconds, the lives of the people of L’Aquila, and several other towns and villages through Abruzzo and further afield, were changed forever. For several others, 295 at the last count, their lives stopped there.
People in the city centre rushed in their bed clothes to the Piazza Duomo, screaming and wailing, hugging whoever was closest to them, friend or stranger made no difference. “It’s the end of the world,” they screeched. All around them, they could see the city crumbling, the magnificent dome of their beloved Duomo di San Massimo collapsing.
Not far from the Duomo, a students dormitory collapsed in on itself in seconds, resulting in the largest single loss of life in the whole region. Now, close to a fortnight later, it’s a mound of rubble in a gaping hole among the rest of the buildings on the ill-fated XX Settembre Street, a street where in all likelihood, practically all the surviving buildings will have to be demolished. Flowers and soft toys lie on the ground next to the remains of the dormitory, placed there by students who were allowed to visit the site to pay their respects to their dead friends, to try reliving some of the memories so savagely torn to shreds that night. Two students hold onto each other across the road, gazing tearfully at the rubble. They have happy memories of their time living there, but also the horrifying recollection of being trapped in the remnants of the building of twisted beams and smashed concrete till finally being rescued through heroic efforts by the Civil Protection. One of the girls wants to go closer, to touch the stones that were her home until a few days before. I lend her my helmet, and a fire-fighter takes her up to the edge of the rubble.
Moving through the streets, taking care to always try to stick to the middle of the road when on foot because of the ever-present danger of falling debris, given the regular aftershocks, I pass the orphanage where a nun died while saving five children by covering them with her veil so they wouldn’t suffocate. Cars lie buried in rubble, people’s possessions lie abandoned in the streets. Their lives have been exposed for all to see – their private bedrooms opened to prying eyes after the walls fell out, even if the buildings remained standing. It is a ghost town, the eerie silence broken only by the movement of civil protection vehicles driving slowly, fire-fighters clearing debris away, trying to make safe places where masonry is hanging by a thread.
Nothing can prepare you for this kind of sight – seeing it in photographs or television doesn’t even come close to seeing it for real. Though the damage is not as widespread as in other major earthquakes that have taken place, such as in China last year, even hardened experienced journalists who thought they’d seen all the horrors that the world could throw their way, feel that this is one of the places that has most affected them – maybe because it’s closer to home. I’m in a place of death, of hell - I can’t even begin to imagine what it must have been like for the people who lived through it.
Their lives will never be the same. A part of each of them died alongside those who would never see the light of day again.
This trip was the initiative of Koperattiva Kulturali Universitarja(KKU) and will be followed by a photographic exhibition which will take place during Evenings on Campus 2009.
“Around 3 on the Richter scale,” he tells me afterwards, a far cry from the 6.3 magnitude earthquake which struck the region on April 6 with devastating ferocity. I relax again, and before long, I’m hardly taking any notice of the tremors myself, or that’s what I try to tell myself. Yet that night I sleep with my hard hat next to my bed, my boots ready to be jumped into instantly and more clothing than I’d normally wear in the bed, and not because the room is cold.
My hotel is right outside the old city walls, only a couple of hundred metres away from scenes of indescribable devastation. However, if it weren’t for the countless fire engines, police vehicles, army trucks going around all the time, and the tent cities which have sprouted up in every available large open space, you’d never know the region has just been struck by one of Italy’s worst natural disasters in years.
Most of the destruction in L’Aquila itself is concentrated in the historic centre of the town, a place of narrow cobbled streets and sweeping piazzas, beautiful churches rich in art and history. Other parts of the town also suffered damage, but it’s not so evident at first glance because it’s spaced out.
The city centre is off limits to everyone apart from the emergency services, and a steady trickle of residents who are allowed in, in small numbers and under escort, to retrieve personal belongings such as documents, jewellery and money, as well as journalists, also under civil protection escort. The fire-fighters who drive the residents to their homes do not allow them into the houses. The residents have to tell them where their important possessions are, and the fire-fighters go and find them. The residents have to apply to go to their homes, and often have to wait several days till their name is called. The gathering points on the peripheries of the centre are full of people with empty suitcases, holdalls or boxes, patiently waiting their turn.
People appear calm, resigned to their fate. It was a very different story on the night of April 6. Tremors had been shaking the city since December, but few people thought to leave. A few who did mere days before the big one were lucky. Most of the population however was asleep in their beds on that soon-to-be catastrophic night. When the shaking started at 3.32am, accompanied by a terrifying rumble from deep in the earth, buildings shook not from side to side, as one normally expects during an earthquake, but up and down. In those fateful twenty seconds, the lives of the people of L’Aquila, and several other towns and villages through Abruzzo and further afield, were changed forever. For several others, 295 at the last count, their lives stopped there.
People in the city centre rushed in their bed clothes to the Piazza Duomo, screaming and wailing, hugging whoever was closest to them, friend or stranger made no difference. “It’s the end of the world,” they screeched. All around them, they could see the city crumbling, the magnificent dome of their beloved Duomo di San Massimo collapsing.
Not far from the Duomo, a students dormitory collapsed in on itself in seconds, resulting in the largest single loss of life in the whole region. Now, close to a fortnight later, it’s a mound of rubble in a gaping hole among the rest of the buildings on the ill-fated XX Settembre Street, a street where in all likelihood, practically all the surviving buildings will have to be demolished. Flowers and soft toys lie on the ground next to the remains of the dormitory, placed there by students who were allowed to visit the site to pay their respects to their dead friends, to try reliving some of the memories so savagely torn to shreds that night. Two students hold onto each other across the road, gazing tearfully at the rubble. They have happy memories of their time living there, but also the horrifying recollection of being trapped in the remnants of the building of twisted beams and smashed concrete till finally being rescued through heroic efforts by the Civil Protection. One of the girls wants to go closer, to touch the stones that were her home until a few days before. I lend her my helmet, and a fire-fighter takes her up to the edge of the rubble.
Moving through the streets, taking care to always try to stick to the middle of the road when on foot because of the ever-present danger of falling debris, given the regular aftershocks, I pass the orphanage where a nun died while saving five children by covering them with her veil so they wouldn’t suffocate. Cars lie buried in rubble, people’s possessions lie abandoned in the streets. Their lives have been exposed for all to see – their private bedrooms opened to prying eyes after the walls fell out, even if the buildings remained standing. It is a ghost town, the eerie silence broken only by the movement of civil protection vehicles driving slowly, fire-fighters clearing debris away, trying to make safe places where masonry is hanging by a thread.
Nothing can prepare you for this kind of sight – seeing it in photographs or television doesn’t even come close to seeing it for real. Though the damage is not as widespread as in other major earthquakes that have taken place, such as in China last year, even hardened experienced journalists who thought they’d seen all the horrors that the world could throw their way, feel that this is one of the places that has most affected them – maybe because it’s closer to home. I’m in a place of death, of hell - I can’t even begin to imagine what it must have been like for the people who lived through it.
Their lives will never be the same. A part of each of them died alongside those who would never see the light of day again.
This trip was the initiative of Koperattiva Kulturali Universitarja(KKU) and will be followed by a photographic exhibition which will take place during Evenings on Campus 2009.
The End of the World in Twenty Seconds - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
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