Contractors who reinforced buildings “on the cheap” may have run up the death toll in central Italy’s devastating quake and could face criminal charges, a local prosecutor said Sunday.
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Residents of the hill town said up to 10 people were still missing and emergency services said they might have located three corpses in Amatrice’s Hotel Roma, which, like much of the historic center, was wrecked by Wednesday’s quake.
Pope Francis is planning to visit the areas worst hit.
The death toll from last Wednesday’s quake was revised down one to 290 as civil protection officials, firefighters and volunteers continued to sift through the wreckage in the towns of Amatrice and Accumoli but hopes of finding any survivors were dim.
The quake that struck before dawn Wednesday also injured almost 400 people as it flattened three medieval towns near the rugged Apennines.
It is not clear if those six were included in the overall death toll of 290 given by authorities.
Officials with the Civil Protection agency gave the 290 figure during a televised news conference Sunday. Prosecutor Giuseppe Saieva, based in the nearby provincial capital of Rieti, said the high human death toll “cannot only be considered the work of fate”.
Investigations are focusing on a number of structures, including an elementary school in Amatrice that crumbled despite being renovated in 2012 to resist earthquakes at a cost of 700,000 euros ($785,000).
With schoolchildren still on their summer holidays, the school was not in use. Amatrice’s municipal website said the town had 100 churches, but every one was damaged by the disaster and many would have to be demolished.
After an entire first grade class and teacher were killed a 2002 quake in San Giuliano di Puglia, Italian officials had vowed to ensure the safety of schools, hospitals and other critical institutions.
Questions also surround a bell tower in Accumoli that collapsed, killing a family of four sleeping in a neighboring house, including a baby of 8 months and a 7-year-old boy.
“This risk of infiltration is always high”, he told La Repubblica newspaper. “Post-earthquake reconstruction is historically a tempting morsel for criminal groups and colluding business interests”.
Deadly quakes which have led to criminal investigations of suspicions ranging from misuse of funds or corruption involving awarding of construction contracts include the 1980 quake in the Naples area and a 2009 tremor in L’Aquila, central Italy.
Museums across Italy donated proceeds from their ticket sales on Sunday to help the rebuilding effort, while top flight soccer teams held a minute’s silence before their weekend matches out of respect for the victims.
Wednesday’s 6.2 magnitude quake destroyed not only private homes but also churches and other centuries-old cultural treasures.
Pope Francis said Sunday that he hopes to visit the Italian towns devastated last week by a powerful quake, as the cleanup continued in the wake of a disaster that left 290 people dead.
Amatrice bore the brunt of earthquake’s destruction, with 229 fatalities and a town turned into rubble and dust.
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Last week, a stream of ambulances brought more than 100 victims in body bags from Amatrice and another hard-hit town, Accumoli, to the airport at Rieti, 65 kilometers (40 miles) away. Almost 2,700 people whose homes collapsed or left unsafe by the August 24 temblor now stay in 58 tent camps or other shelters arranged by the Civil Protection agency. “My thoughts are with them because there are people who have lost everything, homes, loved ones”, local resident, Luciana Cavicchiuni, told reporters. “We are thinking about the families who lost relatives, who lost their homes, who lost everything”.
