An outcry over the shoddy, corrupt building practices which led to so many buildings in the university city being inadequately prepared for a quake led to the national Civil Protection agency making nearly 1 billion euros available for upgrading buildings in quake-vulnerable areas.
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Italy’s Civil Protection Agency said the death doll has risen to 291, after a man died in the hospital. “Dear brothers and sisters, I hope to come to see you as soon as possible, to bring you in person the comfort of the faith, the embrace of a father and a brother, and the support of Christian hope”.
The investigation will focus on a number of structures, including an elementary school in Amatrice that crumbled when the quake hit Wednesday.
That means the cost on any rebuilding – probably running into the billions of euros – will have to be shouldered by a state that already has one of the highest debt mountains in the world that it is perennially struggling to keep under control.
Italy has declared a national day of mourning and held a state funeral for the victims of this week’s strong quake.
Italy plans to build simple, wooden chalet-style huts within three months for the 2,500 people displaced by the 24 August natural disaster.
Franco Roberti, the head of Italy’s national anti-mafia directorate, said organised crime operations had been notorious for infiltrating construction contracts after the 1980 Irpinia natural disaster near Naples in which more than 2,400 people died.
Pope Francis is planning to visit the areas worst hit. 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. Residents stress that renovation work seldom observes the country’s notoriously complex building regulations, which more often than not are bypassed by homeowners with a bribe or a fine agreed with their local commune (town) officials.
There were also allegations that the Calabrian mafia or ‘Ndrangheta was implicated in construction contracts after the 2009 L’Aquila quake.
Emotions that had been dammed up for days broke in a crescendo of grief.
DURANT, Miss. (AP): Friends and colleagues who knew two nuns killed in their MS home are gathering Sunday to remember them, as authorities continue to investigate the harrowing crime that shocked people in the small communities where the women committed their lives to helping the poor.
“In particular, I am thinking of the towns of Amatrice, Accumoli, Arquata, Pescara del Tronto and Norcia. the church shares your suffering and your worries”. Many mourners were recovering from injuries themselves, some wrapped in bandages.
Overnight, residents were rattled yet again by a series of aftershocks. Everywhere people knelt at coffins, tears running down their cheeks, their arms around loved ones. CCTV’s Kate Parkinson filed this report from Amatrice, once known for its pasta and now, for its great tragedy.
According to Italian media, the government is poised to appoint a special commissioner to oversee the huge reconstruction operation, which is being hampered by aftershocks – more than 1,800 since the quake struck on Wednesday.
Mourner Raphaela Baiocchi told Eleanor that “we are participating, all our pain for our population”.
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Over the past two days, they found six more bodies in the rubble of Hotel Roma in Amatrice, the medieval hill town in mountainous central Italy that bore the brunt of destruction and loss of life in the powerful quake. “We are thinking about the families who lost relatives, who lost their homes, who lost everything”.
