Extra, Extra - Read All About It

This Week In News...

It’s 1AM Sunday when half of Emilia Romagna gets a little... shaken up. Oh, weird? It would happen again around 4AM rumbling our entire region with a 6.0 magnitude earthquake, lasting 20 seconds and felt within a 22 mile zone. Everyone woken and confused would then look at each other and essentially say, “Oh, earthquake. Now what?” The scariest is waking to feel your whole world literally disrupted with no power to stop it. Where’s the safest place to go or the most effective thing to do? Think about our neighbors on the 8th level of the apartment buildings. What’s their game plan? 

Yes, everyone is tip-toeing around, all nervous and anxious, but considering its potential we got extremely lucky. What are our numbers and how bad is the damage?

 

7 people have died.
50 people were injured.
3,000 people have been evacuated.
5,260 people are now homeless.
5.1 and 3.8 aftershocks have occurred.
20-day state of emergency has been declared by the Italian government 

(meaning, let's ditch the local regulations so civil protection agency officials can answer this SOS without paperwork, permission or problems)

50 million euros have been set aside for relief effort.
300,000 units of Parmesan and Grana Padano collapsed
aka- 10% of the national production of these cheeses.
$254 million is the estimate of agricultural loss  including cheese, livestock and damaged machinery.

And yours truely? I haven’t felt a thing. If it wasn’t for tangible evidence, I’d think everyone was just messing around with me. I was sleeping soundly as a princess by that hour. 

At school, everything is another story. The great crack right across my building and in one of the concrete foundation columns keeps the paranoia going. The emergency alarm accidentally sounded yesterday was a complete disaster. Sabin is a mess! So for now our courtyard has been closed to be safe (the second-hand smoke just became a lot more concentrated and suffocating in that tightened space) . It’s Wednesday but you can still find the jokesters shaking things up in the hallways. Oh, I can’t wait for that joke to get old. 

Living right in the center of Bologna, I'm as safe as I can be - we're in the clear over here. Regardless, my "NO WORRIES" email sent home Sunday morning was misinterpreted thanks to my usual sarcasm. Geeze kids, do you really think I would have messed around with that kind of news? No way, Jose. 

The information is all clear and updated. OMG yes! Italy has television and news too; I’m living overseas, not with cavemen. The disappointing aspect is how little government financial support has been provided but, this coming as no surprise to the Italians, they’ve taken care of things themselves with good hope. Oh, PS. these photos are all stolen online. Relax- this is not what my daily surroundings are looking like. 

Down south in Brindisi this week, it’s harder to find such promising positivity. A bomb placed in front of a school (named after an anti-mafia prosecutor’s wife killed with her husband when their car passed over a half-ton bomb) killed 16-year-old Melissa Bassi and injured ten of her classmates. 

Who did it? Still unclear. Identified only by fuzzy pictures of a middle-aged man wearing a dark coat, light colored pants and classy shoes. 

Why did it happen? Still unknown.  

Something unconsidered in the States but the first thought in an Italian’s head for such an accident is the Mafia. During a class discourse yesterday, my classmates explained that the Mafia has its power and it has its image. They inflict pain on those who then intend it for. The Mafia tends to “leave a sort of signature to say why they did it.” The unsophisticated explosives - a detonator attached to three gas canisters hidden in a dumpster outside the gate - don't seem to be their style. So who this is and what it's supposed to "prove" is still a big question. Police have their own ideas for suspects but the certainty has yet to come to comfort anyone.

Italy is in recession grappling with a deep economic crises and loss of confidence in political institutions, attacked in just one week by a bomb and a deadly earthquake... who could blame my Literature prof when she sat back in her chair at the end of our discussion (no lessons learned that day), rested her head in her hand and wondered out loud, "What is happening to us? Continuing like this, where are we headed?" I see little hope. The frustration and the exhaustion is clearly tiring the people. But can I say something maybe a bit naive? In my generation I see a class of decently-educated, well-informed kids sincerely passionate and really angry about what they've got waiting for them. Of course, there are also the complete teenage idiots who couldn't even load a dishwasher without a helping hand... Buuuuut I see lots of ideas. I see change bubbling, ready to explode. Keep your chin up, Italy. New tides could be coming your way.