The earthquake in Abruzzi has brought back childhood memories.
Italy is crisscrossed by seismic lines. The earthquake of 1976, which destroyed several towns in the north-eastern region of Friuli, stands out clearly in my memory.
It was an early evening in May. It had been unseasonably warm. I was in bed reading to my mother a story I had just written. Out of the blue came a loud roar like an angry thunder and the house started shaking. Mother grabbed me and we ran out. The aftershocks continued for months. I once woke up in the early morning and the bed was moving.
I also remember my school collecting clothes for the survivors of the earthquake of the region around Naples in 1980.
It is memories like these that bring the human side of natural disasters home to us.
This morning, tired of the sterilised reporting on CNN, I began scanning the Facebook pages of my Italian friends for stories.
I stumbled into an incredible one.
Giampaolo Giuliani, an expert at the Gran Sasso national laboratory, had apparently warned the authorities a week before the earthquake about some seismic activity he had been detecting. He was denounced for spreading false news!
If you read Italian, it is worth checking out the comments on Dazebao about the incident.
They embody the power of social media… and make you think that the days of TV reporting, as we know it, are counted.
Photo: thanks to itn.co.uk
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Alas, the warning was like the man standing on the street corner proclaiming the end of the world. He is correct, but when?
I am safe in US but many relatives are lost…
Many prayers…
I am so sorry about your relatives