LAST WEEK, in the days immediately following the earthquake in Abruzzo which claimed 294 lives, lots of reporters turned up at Luigi Rotilio’s house, close to the fire station in L’Aquila. The point is that this 1959-built house is still standing while, all around it, others have collapsed.
This was a family-built house. When Luigi’s father started to build it, his major helpers were his wife and his son. Luigi recalls that his father had a sort of wooden frame in which they mixed sand and cement. That way, he and his mother “hand-made” the more than 3,000 bricks that went into the building of the family home.
When people ask Luigi how come his house is still standing, his answer is simple: “My father was a terrific brickie, a maestro of a builder, but people today . . .”
There are other houses like Luigi’s in and around L’Aquila, houses that are still standing, houses that were solidly built, using the right materials and even houses that took on board the anti-seismic requirements for building in known earthquake zone.
Unfortunately, the San Salvatore hospital is not one of them.
As Italy and Abruzzo slowly come to terms with the tragic aftermath of last week’s earthquake, some very uncomfortable questions are being asked.
When he visited L’Aquila last week, state president Giorgio Napolitano, as well as offering comfort to the stricken and bereaved, also did some straight-talking. How come building regulations were not properly enforced? he asked. A lot of people are involved in the building of an apartment block or house, he added.
However, even as the president was speaking, state prosecutor Alfredo Rossini was already opening what he himself has referred to as “the mother of all investigations” into criminal or civil responsibilities linked to building practices in the earthquake zone.
One of the thorniest elements in this investigation will clearly be the San Salvatore hospital.
Work began on the San Salvatore as far back as 1972. It was scheduled to be opened in four or five years at an initial cost of €5 million (or equivalent thereof).
When work on the hospital finished in 2000, 28 years later, (the structure had actually opened in 1992), the final bill was €101 million.
That was bad enough, but the unforgivable thing was that the San Salvatore completely failed to withstand the earthquake.
Within hours, it had to be abandoned, given that parts of the building had collapsed, causing the deaths of two babies in the paediatric unit and forcing patients to seek refuge first in the hospital grounds and then in the nearby hospitals of Teramo, Avezzano and Pescara.
Meanwhile, the medical staff transferred themselves to the “field hospital” set up by the Protezione Civile, the rescue service. While it is hoped shortly to reopen parts of the hospital, for the time being it is officially 95 per cent “unusable”.
Part of the San Salvatore’s problems were linked to the fact that the first two companies which began the building, Pascali and Edilirti, both went into liquidation.
Not for nothing, Impregilo, the Milan-based construction company which finished off the building of the hospital, was quick to issue a statement last week in which it pointed out that it had been responsible only for the “finishing touches”, such as electricity and furnishings.
That something was potentially wrong with the San Salvatore had been highlighted by a parliamentary commission, ironically in the year that the hospital was finally finished, namely 2000.
The commission’s report speaks of the “irrationality and obsolescence of the building’s design”, while it complains about the “poor quality” of building materials used, as well as suggesting that the design of the building saw it stretched out over too large a tract of land.
Given the confused and complicated history of the hospital’s construction, this will clearly be a difficult investigation.
Prosecutor Rossini said the other day that he would be looking into the original contracts, the quality of building materials, the type of cement and steel used, not to mention the plans, designs and check-ups relative to the building.
Given the timespan, too, he might well want to investigate whether and to what extent the building of the hospital became involved in the “Tangentopoli” scandal of the early 1990s when a whole series of bribes were paid for public works contracts in Abruzzo.
There are those, however, who have already drawn their own conclusions.
“The hospital wouldn’t have collapsed if it had been built properly”, said L’Aquila mayor Massimo Cialente last week.