The town of Amatrice bore the brunt of the quake, which is known to have killed at least 290 people.
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On Tuesday, a memorial service – without the bodies – will be held for the dead of Amatrice on that battered town’s outskirts.
Shoddy, price-cutting renovations, in breach of local building regulations, could be partly to blame for the high death toll from last week’s devastating quake in central Italy, according to a prosecutor investigating the disaster. The school was renovated in 2012 to resist earthquakes at a cost of 700,000 euros.
On Saturday, mourners prayed, hugged, wept and even applauded as coffins carrying quake victims passed by at a state funeral in the town of Ascoli Piceno.
Italy’s lobbying group for farmers, Coldiretti, said Monday its members didn’t want to make barns available for quake victims because their animals need them.
Weeping relatives hugged each other and reached out to touch the simple wooden coffins at a state funeral on Saturday for some of the 291 people killed in an quake. Yet, he called the idea that Italy could build earthquake-proof buildings “absurd”.
The Italian Council of Ministers approved a state of emergency Thursday for the regions affected by the natural disaster, allocating 50 million euros (about $56.5 million) in funding.
The death toll in the worst-hit town Amatrice was 230, while the number of victims in Accumoli and Arquato del Tronto were 11 and 50 respectively. “But I ask you not to lose your courage”, Bishop Giovanni D’Ercole said in a homily in the hall, which was packed with grieving families and top politicians. Others stay in a gym in the hardest-hit town, Amatrice, while those most fearful of looting often sleep in cars near their damaged homes. On the weekend, as the first mass funerals were held and as hopes of finding any more survivors vanished, rescue teams and their machines were busy clearing the streets of rubble and trying to find some of the 10 victims still listed as missing. People bid farewell to loved ones, kneeling, crying and placing their hands on flower-covered caskets.
The government is reportedly poised to name a special commissioner to oversee the huge reconstruction operation, which is being hampered by aftershocks, with two more, measuring 3.7 and 4.4, hitting the region on Sunday afternoon.
He said local and regional leaders also agreed that temporary housing for the homeless will involve pre-fab Alpine-style villas in the places where existing communities were, complete with schools, saying the important thing was to give residents hope and keep their sense of community. He says he intends to mount a house-by-house investigation and is prepared to file criminal charges against anyone – even those who lost family members – if their renovations failed to observe anti-seismic regulations. As Italians observed a day of national mourning, President Sergio Mattarella and. “Only together can we rebuild our houses and our churches”.
BERLIN (AP): Faced with more than one million migrants flooding across the Mediterranean a year ago, European nations tightened border controls, set up naval patrols to stop smugglers, negotiated an agreement with Turkey to limit the numbers crossing, shut the Balkan route used by hundreds of thousands, and tried to speed up deportations of rejected asylum-seekers.
The quake left a few thousand people without homes, with almost 2,700 hosted in a total of 58 tent “towns” set up on the outskirts of the ravaged areas, or improvised shelters, including a gym with a basketball court in Amatrice.
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Gera reported from Rome.
