Italy Prepares to Bury Quake Victims
Sabina Castelfranco
|
L'Aquila, Italy
08 April 2009
Italy is preparing to hold the first funerals for victims of the
powerful earthquake that struck the country's central Abruzzo region.
Services will be held outside the badly hit regional capital L'Aquila,
as many of its buildings remain unstable.
The rescue
operations in L'Aquila and nearby areas hit by the earthquake are
continuing, and they managed to dig out from the rubble, three
survivors.
One of them was a 98-year-old woman who was
underneath her collapsed house for 30 hours. Another one was a young
girl, 20 years old, who was underneath the rubble for 42 hours. And,
yet another young lady was also taken out.
The majority of the
rescue operations are dead bodies. That is the majority of what is
being retrieved from the buildings that have collapsed in L'Aquila and
the other 25 towns in this area.
The funerals have now been
confirmed and should be held on Friday. Pope Benedict XVI just said that
he will be visiting the victims of this earthquake. He will be coming
to this area after Easter Sunday.
Meanwhile, 20 tent cities
have been set up in this area. Other survivors are being moved out to
the coastal resorts not far from L'Aquila, where they are being housed
in hotels that are usually used in the summer and are empty in the
winter months.
In addition, the relief effort continues in the
tent cities for all these people.
They are very distressed because the earth here
continues to move. About 430 tremors have been felt since the big
earthquake struck early Monday and another very big aftershock was felt
yesterday: 5.3 in magnitude. That aftershock sent people fleeing from
their tents. It was early evening and people were screaming, terrified
that the worst is not over yet.
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