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Post by lagatta on Apr 6, 2009 19:17:26 GMT
Very upsetting. Many people here in Montréal are from "gli Abruzzi" - the former region now divided into Abruzzo (L'Aquila, Pescara) and Molise (Campobasso). At least 150 dead reported as of now, and this will not get better.  L'Aquila is a beautiful town, set in high mountains. Unfortunately, with the current régime in Italy, I suspect a lot of the aid money sent will wind up in someone's pocket.  |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2009 19:25:55 GMT
When I first got up this morning, they were announcing 2 dead. 15 minutes later it was 4 dead... and so on throughout the day.
When they said that a student residence had collapsed, I immediately had thoughts of Mafia contracts and inferior building materials from crooked companies.
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Post by spindrift on Apr 6, 2009 20:15:18 GMT
Who would have thought that a fierce earthquake would happen in Italy when it's been expected in California for so long....and Kathmandu for that matter.
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Post by lagatta on Apr 6, 2009 20:34:19 GMT
Kerouac, I was thinking the same thing about the student residence. That was a modern building, and normally as such a public building should have been held to very stringent earthquake codes. It is very odd that it didn't survive a quake of moderate severity.
spindrift, you know all the Mediterranean basin, like the other two places you mentioned, is an earthquake zone. There were minor quakes there all the time when I was living there. Look at the very murderous quakes in Turkey in recent years (there again, the great loss of live resulted in part from corruption and poor building, but Turkey at least has the excuse of being poorer than central Italy).
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Post by spindrift on Apr 6, 2009 20:46:13 GMT
That's true. I'd forgotten about the earthquakes in the Ionian islands, Greece.
Lagatta: when you say 'all the Med basin is an earthquake zone' - do you also include the South of France?
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Post by lagatta on Apr 6, 2009 22:52:47 GMT
Mea culpa; I was being sloppy. I haven't heard of severe earthquakes in the very south of France, so perhaps others can enlighten us. Certainly in the Maghrebi countries just opposite there - I don't really know the exact location of the fault lines.
I am more than a little upset about this, so not being as anal as usual!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2009 22:58:08 GMT
Yes there have been severe earthquakes in the south of France, also in Alsace and Brittany.
Nice and Strasbourg have both been destroyed by earthquakes in the past.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2009 10:59:51 GMT
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Post by auntieannie on Apr 15, 2009 19:41:51 GMT
Spindrift, Valais in Switzerland is a known high risk area for earthquakes.
Edited to say: I was following the news and was also not too happy about the situation. But naturally, halfway through the Easter weekend, people stopped being interested.
Lagatta, I know exactly in which pockets the money will go... and it will show on his face, if he can lift it further... yuck!
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Post by lagatta on Apr 16, 2009 3:30:45 GMT
auntieanne, this distresses me greatly - I have family from there, but can't bear to give my proverbial widow's mite, as I've seen too many cases of people living in refugee housing for years or decades while the donations disappear, though Italy is all in all a wealthy country, pockets of poverty or not.
There was a big fundraising telethon on Italian-language radio today - I cycled by as they were doing it. And Mr Serial Facelift isn't the only one with the bottomless pockets.
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Post by spindrift on Apr 16, 2009 8:42:18 GMT
The Valais? I had no idea.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 16, 2009 16:57:57 GMT
All of the Alps are an earthquake region.
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Post by spindrift on Apr 16, 2009 21:42:09 GMT
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Post by auntieannie on Apr 17, 2009 18:49:19 GMT
The Alps are still young, Spindrift... still growing....
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Post by Deleted on Apr 17, 2009 20:13:05 GMT
Meanwhile, this earthquake has already dropped out of the world news. How quickly they oblige us to move on to other things!
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Post by Deleted on May 6, 2009 9:05:05 GMT
This map shows where there have been major earthquakes in France -- you can see that the French/Swiss/Italian area of the Alps is quite active.  |
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Post by distantshores on Jun 17, 2009 13:44:18 GMT
Meanwhile, this earthquake has already dropped out of the world news. How quickly they oblige us to move on to other things! What ever did become of this? We saw all of the caskets lined up in an open plazza and there were like 175 dead at the time. That is the last we ever did hear about it over here in the US. I was curious whether there were ever photos taken of all the villages that were supposedly damaged or destroyed. They had said it was a beautiful region of Italy. Does anyone know of a website that would give details? |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 19, 2009 17:29:28 GMT
There were some articles this week. There are something like 42 major monuments that have been seriously damaged, and countries that want to help have been invited to 'adopt' a monument for the restoration. France has adopted the church Santa Maria del Suffragio.  |
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