In Italian town, nothing left to hold a funeral for quake victims
ARQUATA DEL TRONTO, Italy – With no secure structures left large enough to hold a funeral, residents of this village of 1,200 will begin Saturday to memorialize their dead 20 miles away in Ascoli Piceno, a larger city mostly spared by Wednesday's devastating earthquake.
“The town is gone,” said Marco Morra, 33, a mechanic who often repairs vehicles in Arquata del Tronto. “It is not even possible to do the most natural thing after a tragedy: to bury the dead.”
The possibility of finding survivors grows dimmer with each passing hour. Residents and rescue workers in the area devastated by the magnitude 6.2 earthquake in Italy are reluctantly turning their attention toward recovering bodies and planning funerals.
At least 268 have been found dead since the earthquake that struck at about 3:30 a.m. Wednesday. There are no official numbers for those still considered missing, according to Immacolata Postiglione, one of the directors of Italy’s Emergency Civil Protection Agency, since “the area had so many tourists, in addition to residents.”
Italian media reported Friday that rescue workers were searching for anywhere between “at least 50” to “more than 200” unaccounted for individuals. The total number of dead may yet surpass the 309 from the 2009 earthquake in L’Aquila, which is the deadliest in Italy since 1980.
Several rescue workers noted the last survivor was pulled from the rubble in L’Aquila at the start of the fourth day after the quake, but they admitted the focus of their work had shifted.
“Now we’re still hoping to find someone alive but also trying to locate the dead,” said Giulio Di Stefano, a volunteer rescue worker who came to Amatrice from Rome. “We have to do it one building at a time. We paint a mark on the outside of a damaged building to show it is thoroughly searched, and then we move on until the next one.”
Nello Giordano, another volunteer worker, said he was part of a team trying to secure damaged buildings to prevent them from collapsing further and injuring someone else. He said part of a wall of a building in one town near Amatrice fell on a rescue worker, injuring his leg severely enough that he had to be hospitalized.
“We try to secure the buildings that can be secured, and then rope off areas where the risk of further damage remains,” Giordano said.
Families across the zone hit by the earthquake will soon start burying their dead.
In addition to Arquata del Tronto’s funerals in Ascoli Piceno, other cities, including Amatrice, Accumoli di Rieti, and Pescara del Tronto — all among the hardest hit by the quake — will hold their first funerals over the weekend.
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi declared Saturday a national day of mourning for the victims of the earthquake. Renzi pledged around $56 million to kick start rebuilding efforts.
“It is time now for us to bury our loved ones,” said Amatrice resident Franca Mariano, 40, who lost two close friends and one cousin in the earthquake. “Everyone here knows someone who died Wednesday. We have to honor them and then do our best to move on.”
Natalia Lapaeva, 46, a cook from Posta, lost her closest friend when the five-floor building he was in collapsed during the earthquake.
“I don’t know yet when his funeral will be held, but it will soon be time,” she said. “It’s the friends and loved ones we lose that make this a tragedy. We can rebuild houses. But the people are gone.”