L'Aquila The Historical Town That Was No Match For a Mild Earthquake

Article: Myths and Realities About The Recovery of L’Aquila After The Earthquake

 

On April 6th 2009, an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.3 Mw hit the town of L’Aquila the capital city of the province Abruzzo. The earthquake's epicenter was 3.4 km south west of L’Aquila and considered to be low magnitude compared to other earthquakes worldwide. The downtown section of L’Aquila was full of old historical buildings so when the earthquake happened many buildings fell or were damaged. The total damage was estimated to be over 16 billion euros. Of the 72,800 population of L’Aquila, the earthquake injured 1,500, seriously injured 202, killed 308, and left 67,500 homeless. With over 100,000 buildings destroyed, the government decided to build 284 housing units in 19 new settlements. L’Aquila after the earthquake has been called the “Pompeii of the 21st Century” because of the amount of damage done and the slow progress it has taken to rebuild the town. 

The article compares the amount of progress the town has made in restoring its buildings from 2009 to 2012. The article mentions that it was hard to see the changes between 2009 and 2012 and mentions how rubble was still being removed even in 2012 as it was in 2009. The slowness of the recovery has been blamed on administrative and bureaucracy issues and not the construction itself. Historical buildings can take up to ten years or more to be restored which is a possible reason why the authors did not see much change from 2009 to 2012. The town of L’Aquila faces the struggle of not having a major tourism industry to help push the reconstruction to move faster.

When we visited the town of L’Aquila I was surprised to see how many of the buildings were still under major construction. It seemed like the earthquake could have happened a year ago because of the amount of construction and the progress of the buildings. We were given a private tour of a church that was in the process of being restored and the damage the church had experienced was shocking. When trying to get coffee after lunch we had a hard time finding a store that was open which led me to believe that the town had not quite recovered. Since so much of the population has moved away it can be hard for the town to sustain many businesses. It will be interesting to see in a few more years after the construction is done how many people will live in the town and how the economy will do. So many of the current jobs are tied to reconstruction so when that is all done, people will need to find work in new industries. 

Pictures are from the tour of the town and the church we went in. You can see the amount of damage that was done and how they are restoring the buildings.