Comments on: Earthquake, Abruzzo, Italy – Update

By: Domani

Domani — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 22:04:32 +0000

[...] new song by a bunch of great Italian singers. It was made to raise money for the victims of the earthquakes in Abruzzo. Check it [...]

By: Alex_Roe

Alex_Roe — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 08:23:24 +0000

Hi Vincent,

In answer to your first question, not all of the residents of L’Aquila have returned to their homes. Slowly but surely the authorities have been inspecting buildings in the area and declaring them habitable or otherwise.

Some people will have returned, but I don’t know how many. I tried calling L’Aquila council, but got no reply. While things are coming along, there is still quite a bit of chaos down there and I’ve heard reports that people will start moving out of the tent towns into more permanent accommodation from September on.

I suspect the situation is the same for the surrounding villages. To confirm this, I’ve had a go at calling a few numbers, but have not got hold of anyone just yet. When I manage to find someone who has the info, I’ll post another comment here.

In the meantime, you could have a look at this document which is a list of all the buildings inspected up to the 24 July 2009 – look at the far right hand column which names the zones in which the inspections took place – names of villages hit by the quake, such as Onna, are given. And look at the column over on the right entitled ‘fraz’ which stands for ‘frazione’ for the names of smaller villages: http://www.comune.laquila.it/documenti/terremoto/20090724_totale.pdf

It’s a long list at 663 pages, and at about 30 properties per page, the total is around 20,000 buildings inspected. This gives an idea of the scale of the problem.

It appears to be a comprehensive list, and was produced by l’Aqulia council, so it should be accurate too.

Best regards,

Alex

By: Vincent Diorio

Vincent Diorio — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:30:28 +0000

I am still trying to find out whether the residents of L’Aquilla have returned to their homes, and how many (and which) surrounding villages have suffered the same problem (forrced to stay out of their homes)? Can anyone help me??

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:48:53 +0000

Hi Rocco,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us. I agree that living in an earthquake zone must be traumatic. It’s something I would think hard about, and even if I did decide to take the plunge, I would look for a modern house which has been certified as quake proof, and even then, I think it would be wise to commission an additional report to ensure that the certification is accurate. In Italy corners are often cut.

Alternatively, you could just bite the bullet and hope that nothing more will happen for a long time, although this may well be a head in the sand approach.

It would be interesting to hear what others think about this. I’ve never lived in an area prone to quakes, so I don’t really know – but many people manage to, so they must have some way of keeping themselves going.

Best regards,

Alex

By: Rocco D'Alessandro

Rocco D'Alessandro — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:55:25 +0000

Katia,
Hello how are you” As an architict Iwould liek to tell you that the home has a terrazzo that has two unfinished rooms with one corse of brink on exterior walls. It would be necessary to have a streel reinforing to hold all walls together. I have seen in other otlder buildings huge steel rods that go from one end of the house to the other it is tensioned and and achored with a steel stake on the wall to keep it tense. In addition to his rode there in my idea would have to be rebare and steel grid mesh attached to the bricks and concrete columns to keep it all together in case of a larger quake. Also there is the problem that the larger apartmnet building besie our home is a fe stories taller than ours and if there was a quake wouldn’t it be the problem with perhaps falling on ours.
Thanks in advance for you opinion.
Rocco