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A little more than a year has passed since an earthquake struck central Italy. 308 people died in the medieval town of L’Aquila and surrounding villages. Tens of thousands of homes were destroyed. And a year later the reconstruction still has not begun. The World’s Gerry Hadden reports from L’Aquila. (Photo: Gerry Hadden)
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MARCO WERMAN: Another disaster occurred one year ago this month in central Italy. That earthquake killed more than 300 people in the medieval town of L’Aquila and surrounding villages. Tens of thousands of homes were destroyed. But The World’s Gerry Hadden reports that reconstruction in the town is going very slowly.
GERRY HADDEN: Above L’Aquila’s main square a crane lowers firemen onto the partial collapsed dome of the main church. Piece by piece, more than 100 feet in the air the men collect loose rubble and toss it into a metal container. The view from above is of a town in ruins. The entire historic center of L’Aquila either collapsed or teeters on the verge. Today people call downtown simply “the red zone”. The whole medieval town center is cordoned off, nobody can live there. Italians generally praise the government’s initial response, rescuing, housing and feeding L’Aquila’s roughly 70,000 homeless survivors. But since then, things have gotten complicated. Five minutes outside of L’Aquila, on a hillside with view of snowcapped mountains, back hoes dig into the earth. The government is building temporary housing here for survivors. They’ve already built 550 modular apartments across the region. As temporary shelters, they’re actually attractive and spacious. Some have over 700 square feet. Agostino Mioxxo is with Italy’s Civil Protection Agency. He points out that the colorful buildings are also state of the art and exceed earthquake codes.
AGOSTINO MIOXXO: These are – - building. You see, they have solar panels to produce energy and hot water and I believe that to stay here for 5, 6, 7 years while they are rebuilding their own house will be much more comfortable than staying and living in a container.
HADDEN: Mioxxo is referring to shipping containers which have bee used in the past to house victims of natural disasters. Mioxxo says they’re too small, too cold in winter, and too hot in summer. On the porch of one of the new apartment here, a housewife with two kids named Stefania agrees.
INTERPRETER: This place isn’t our home, but I’m happy. Many residents here are complaining, but I don’t understand why. My real house needs to be completely demolished. I don’t know how long I will have to stay here, but this is better than being in a container.
HADDEN: Even L’Aquila’s most disgruntled agree with that. The question for some residents, however, is about priorities. They say that while the government spent the last year building this new housing and new modular schools, the effort could have been put towards rebuilding residents’ former homes downtown. At a small squatter’s camp outside L’Aquila, a group of protestors live in a couple of old wooden buildings. Hundreds gather here regularly to demand that the government take quicker action downtown. A young man named Luca says he’s furious that reconstruction of L’Aquila has yet to begin. He calls the government’s temporary homes, known as “progetto casa” overly expensive and extravagant. He says most people are willing to live in substandard housing in order to get their old houses back quicker.
LUCA: Each citizen prefers to live 2, 3, 4 year in a container rather than the government spend to build something that is not your own. And so we prefer container to progetto casa.
HADDEN: I woman here named Masha says she believes the new housing was just a scheme to make construction companies rich.
INTERPRETER: I think they already had this project on a back burner and they were just waiting for some catastrophe to start it. Otherwise they couldn’t have built them so fast.
HADDEN: But local politicians reject such claims. Back at the L’Aquila church downtown, the head of the towns Historical Preservation Office, Luciano Marchetti, says rebuilding houses would have been impossible under any circumstances during this first year because they want to reconstruct this ancient city exactly as it was. He says at this church, for example, we can either rush reconstruction and make up most of it off the top of our heads, or we can try to rebuild it as it was before. We must take great care. We want to avoid ending up with some hack job that smacks of Disneyland. In this church alone, Marchetti says, simply separating the reusable materials from the rubble has taken more than three months. He is reluctant to estimate how long the rebuilding of L’Aquila and nearby villages will take, but it surely will be several years. And according to officials in L’Aquila, costs will likely exceed five billion dollars. For The World, I’m Gerry Hadden in L’Aquila, Italy.
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