It was inaugurated in 2012 after being rebuilt by a consortium of builders, Valori Scarl, which won a contract from Amatrice town council for €700,000 (£600,000) to implement anti-earthquake safety standards in the school buildings, according to judicial sources.
Advertisement
Three more bodies were plucked from the town’s Hotel Roma overnight and there are fears still more bodies will be recovered.
“Our houses are hundreds of years [old] and it is impossible or prohibitively expensive to make changes within the regulations that are drawn up by the government in Rome without any regard to our economic circumstances”, said Perluigi, a retiree from Amatrice, the worst-hit of four towns devastated by the midweek quake.
The death toll Monday stood at 290.
Amatrice was nearly flattened by the 6.0-magnitude quake, which struck at 3:36 a.m. local time on Wednesday. He added: “They call it fate but if these buildings had been constructed as they are in Japan they wouldn’t have collapsed”. With schoolchildren’s summer vacations in their final weeks, the school wasn’t yet in use. Many were shocked that it didn’t withstand the 6.2 magnitude quake. That bell tower also had been recently restored with special funds allocated after Italy’s last major natural disaster, which struck nearby L’Aquila in 2009.
Many Romanians work in Italy and Bucharest said 14 of its nationals were still unaccounted for. “Post-quake reconstruction is always very appetising for criminal gangs and their business partners”.
The ministry said Romanian consular authorities were working with information they received from Italian authorities and from Romanian families who have been affected by the quake.
Roberti noted he wasn’t involved in the local prosecutors’ probes into last week’s quake.
Italy’s state museums are donating Sunday’s proceeds to the relief and reconstruction efforts.
The nation’s rich artistic heritage is being harnessed to help restore some of the notable buildings in the areas affected.
Pope Francis says he plans to visit an area in Italy struck by a deadly quake to bring the people there the “comfort of faith”.
Amatrice bore the brunt of earthquake’s destruction, with 229 fatalities and a town turned into rubble and dust. Eleven others died in nearby Accumoli and 50 more in Arquata del Tronto, 10 miles (16 kilometers) north of Amatrice.
The national mourning will include a state funeral for some of the victims in Ascoli Piceno to be attended by Premier Matteo Renzi and President Sergio Mattarella.
The Civic Protection agency said Saturday that the man, who was injured in the town of Arquata del Tronto, had been receiving treatment at a hospital in Perugia. Some of the dead from Amatrice were still in the town’s makeshift morgue. Amatrice, where rescuers were still looking for people under the rubble, was due to hold its own memorial service on Tuesday, while private funerals have been held in Rome and elsewhere.
Giorgia was one of the last survivors to be rescued and there have been no reports of anyone else being found alive since late Wednesday.
Advertisement
The caskets of 35 people had been brought to a community gym – one of the few structures in the area still intact and large enough to hold hundreds of mourners.
