Italy held a state funeral yesterday for 281 victims of its worst earthquake in three decades and will now turn its thoughts to rebuilding the lives of the thousands made homeless.
On a national day of mourning, about 200 coffins were laid out on the parade ground of a police academy in the mountain city of L’Aquila for the funeral at 11am. About 1,600 bereaved relatives were expected to attend.
“I’ll be there,” said 30-year-old Angelo Dania, whose house was destroyed by the 6.3 magnitude quake that hit the central Italian region of Abruzzo early on Monday as residents slept.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“I am worried about my house, but, in the end, I am the lucky one,” he said. “I could have been one of them.”
Rescue efforts were drawing to an end as hopes of pulling any more survivors from the rubble faded.
“The search is almost over,” said Luca Spoletini, spokesman of the Civil Protection agency, which is coordinating Italy’s response to the emergency.
But one fireman said: “As long as we know there are people under the rubble we’ll keep searching, even if we’re sure they’re dead. Families need to know what happened to their loved ones.”
Rescue work continued to be hampered by violent aftershocks on Thursday, which further damaged buildings in the medieval towns and terrified the 17,000 people living in tent villages.
Thousands more survivors are being put up in hotels or relatives’ homes.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi called L’Aquila a “ghost town” and said reconstruction would cost billions. He plans to attend the state funeral, where Catholic mass will be led by the Vatican’s second-highest priest, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.
The funeral required a special dispensation because mass is not usually celebrated on Good Friday in the Catholic church. Pope Benedict has said he will visit Abruzzo soon.
There will also be an Islamic rite funeral for six Muslim victims.
After the funeral, survivors will start thinking about how to pick up their lives in a region that relies on tourism, farming and family firms. Italy’s industry minister said more than half of the companies in Abruzzo “are no longer producing.”
One estimate put the damage at up to 3 billion euros (US$4 billion), though its impact on Italy’s nearly 2 trillion euro economy, already mired in recession, is expected to be limited.
The government plans to suspend some tax, utility and phone bills in the affected areas and has earmarked 100 million euros for rescue, relief and reconstruction efforts. Italian banks may also suspend mortgage payments and bank charges for survivors.
Local builders, rejecting suggestions that shoddy building was to blame for the collapse of modern buildings that should have been earthquake-proof, including a hospital and student hostel, said some of the damage would prove to be superficial.
Locals were mystified as to why some houses were flattened while neighboring ones of the same period survived, or why the village of Onna was almost entirely destroyed, and its tiny population decimated, but Monticchio next door was untouched.
“It’s as if the earthquake tried to avoid us,” 45-year-old Amedeo Nardicchio said in Monticchio. “We were lucky.”
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS