While there are signs of a die-hard entrepreneurial spirit in the earthquake-hit town about to welcome the G8 summit, for most – stuck in tented villages and left without jobs – the way forward remains uncertain
IT IS AROUND midday in L’Aquila, the Abruzzo capital that made world headlines three months ago when it was devastated by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake which claimed the lives of 297 people. I am standing at the foot of Via Roma, one of the main streets into the centro storico, now blocked off by traffic police and soldiers.
As we stop to ask directions, we notice a car coming back down the street, a car that clearly has been allowed through the road block. In the front seat of the car sits an old lady, tears streaming down her face and clearly very upset. What is the matter with her, we ask? She has just been up to Via XX Settembre to visit the Casa dello Studente (the former student residence) where her granddaughter died, says the policeman.
As L’Aquila prepares to host next week’s G8 summit, it does so against a background of traumatic upset. The physical devastation is still all too obvious. Indeed, in some senses, not a lot seems to have changed since those torrid days at the beginning of April when the world’s media descended on the ruined town.
The place feels like something halfway between the Klondike and a disaster zone. One of the first things to be noticed is that a new, seemingly thriving business has flourished in post-earthquake L’Aquila, namely the selling or renting of temporary wooden buildings. Given that the centro storico remains closed off and that almost 50 per cent of the town’s buildings are still considered unsafe, people (the more fortunate ones) have adapted and set themselves up in business in temporary buildings. Three months ago, one of the earthquake nerve centres was the large tented village in Piazza D’Armi just outside the town centre.
To find a cup of coffee, you had to walk some way back down the main road out of the town to a service cafe. That has changed because a cafe owner near the piazza has simply moved his business forward from his “unsafe” bar into a wooden hut, placed on what used to be parking area. Opened within a month of the earthquake, the bar is doing a very steady trade, too. What is more, even allowing for the cramped dimensions, it has all the feel of your average Italian bar – good-natured banter, good coffee, lousy music, complete with a flat-screen TV up on the wall that nobody is watching.
All around the town, you see more of the same dogged determination to get the show back on the road. Computer discount shops, clothes shops, even a beautician’s parlour have all resorted to the ploy of setting up in temporary structures right beside their original, now unsafe, business site.
The Rocce Dell’Aquila restaurant on Via Della Croce Rosso has found a very Italian solution to this very Italian problem. They have moved the entire operation out front (where there already were tables, of course) and have opted to do all the cooking alla brace, on the open fire. Prices are pretty appetising, too: €3 for a primo piatto and €4 for a secondo.
So, then, all is going swimmingly in L’Aquila? Not quite. Later in the day, we meet up with Claudio Perrotti, one of a group of young architects and engineers called “Collettivo 99”. Formed in the days immediately after the earthquake, their idea was to make their professional skills available to the L’Aquila collective while at the same time closely monitoring the nature and the direction of the restoration projects.
As we sit around a cafe table in a handsome little park close to the Collemaggio area just outside the town, Claudio stops to say hello to another member of Collettivo 99, Gianni. He is there with his mother who has asked for permission to get into the town centre to go to what used to be her health shop. She wants to clear it out and return unsold stock to her suppliers. Like every retailer who had premises in the centro storico, Gianni’s mother has done no business whatsoever for the last three months. All she has done, she says, is accumulate debts. Now, she just hopes that she can persuade her suppliers to take back her goods. In the meantime, despite all the government promises of earthquake relief funding, no one has yet received a single euro of damage compensation. Right now, many Aquilani are either living off savings or running up huge debts. Italy is a country where there is no equivalent of the dole.
CLAUDIO PERROTTI USED to live and work in the centro storico. He points out that, as an architect, he was lucky. He was able to find himself a temporary studio close to L’Aquila and continue working. With a wry grin, he acknowledges that there is a lot of work for architects in L’Aquila, just now: “Others are not so lucky. For many people, the after-earthquake has been worse than the earthquake itself – the loss of a job, a function, a social role in the community is terrible. For people like that, stuck all day in the tendopoli [tented village], they risk going mad.”
Claudio’s family has divided up in a typical L’Aquila way. He and his father share a tent in the Collemaggio tendopoli while his mother and his pregnant sister have moved into one of the many Adriatic seaside hotels made available gratis by the state. (L’Aquila is just about 100km from a much visited Adriatic coastline) At the moment, there are approximately 20,000 people living in the various tented villages around L’Aquila while 32,000 people have moved into the hotels.
Down at the Collemaggio tendopoli, there is a deceptively allegro sensation. Set in the Parco Del Sole town park, this village appears to have everything – schools, a cinema, a public lavanderia complete with washing machines and an ironing board, a dining hall and even a modest vegetable patch. As children race around on their bikes on a summer’s evening, it could pass for a splendid holiday camp.
The problem is that you stay in a holiday camp for one or two weeks. These folks have already been here for three months and the strain is beginning to tell. As we walk around the village with Gaetano, one of the Protezione Civile operatives who run the camp, a woman approaches him with a problem. She is separating from her husband and wants to be moved to a different tent: “In here, we have all the problems of normal life,” says Gaetano.
One major problem has yet to come: winter. It gets very, very cold in winter in L’Aquila. Tents are all very well in June, but come next November? And here we head into one of the major objections of groups like Collettivo 99. They argue that a post-earthquake priority should have been the immediate construction of temporary, Portakabin-type dwellings in which people could have got through next winter, until such time as they are allowed to move back into their homes or have managed to repair them. (Apart from structural damage to buildings, many people cannot return because they have no running water or gas, given that the earthquake badly damaged underground gas and water pipes.)
Under the energetic leadership of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, however, the Italian government has opted for a reconstruction plan that envisages building no less than 20 new towns in a huge extended area around L’Aquila and its province. It is hoped that these towns, comprising seismic-proof permanent buildings, will be ready to accommodate 13-15,000 people by the end of October.
Critics argue, however, that these towns are unlikely to be ready in time and, rather than representing a solution to L’Aquila’s problems, they represent a glorious opportunity for building speculation. In that context, there have been worrying media reports in the past week that the initial work on the first of these towns, at Bazzano, was carried out by a company linked to the Sicilian Mafia. At best, argue environmentalists and architects, the new towns represent a distraction of both funds and energy from a more important priority, namely the restoration and reconstruction of L’Aquila’s mediaeval centre.
IN THAT CONTEXT, though, many see next week’s G8 summit as an even bigger distraction. For example, a new road to L’Aquila airport has been built in order to quickly transport the VIPs to the summit centre, in the Coppito Tax Police barracks outside L’Aquila. If you have just lost your house through an earthquake, how high a priority is a new airport road? When Berlusconi took the bold decision to move the G8 from its original intended venue of La Maddalena in Sardinia to L’Aquila, he said that the move was motivated by a desire to have a more “sober” summit, to raise awareness about the earthquake and also to invite the world powers to “adopt” a L’Aquila historic building badly in need of repair.
Many in L’Aquila are not convinced, arguing that the Berlusconi and others were motivated by security considerations. With soldiers, firemen and policemen present in numbers for three months now, semi-militarised L’Aquila is just about the safest place in Italy. There seems little danger of a repetition of the violence which marred Italy’s last G8 in Genoa in 2001.
In the meantime, life may well be even more stressful for the people of L’Aquila next week. Accountant Gianni Leoni, another of those who have loaned their professional services to the reconstruction, puts it this way: “The people of L’Aquila just hope that the G8 does not become a Sunday drive through the ruins of a city for the world’s powerful, acting for all the world like parents who take kids to the zoo and photograph the animals deprived of their liberty and their natural habitat.”