The toads got out days before the earthquake, but a year on, little has improved for the human population that remains, writes PADDY AGNEW
IF ANYBODY had opted to observe the movements of the toad population in and around the Abruzzo city of L'Aquila this time last year, lives might have been saved. L'Aquila is the city that on the night of April 5th last year was struck by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake that killed 308 people and left more than 40,000 homeless.
A study published this week by the Journal of Zoologyclaims that a whole population of toads, in a highly unusual move, abandoned their breeding colonies three days before the earthquake struck. Male toads, the journal claims, normally stay active at breeding sites until spawning has finished. In this case, however, 96 per cent of them upped and left town five days before the seismic activity. Two days later, all the breeding pairs had left.
The toads’ method of sensing danger remains unclear, but scientists wonder if they are tipped off by disruptions in the ionosphere linked to the release of radon gas prior to an earthquake. All of this recalls the controversial figure of seismologist Gioacchino Giampaolo Giuliani, a man who one year ago controversially claimed to have predicted the L’Aquila earthquake thanks to his readings of radon gas levels (his predictions were ignored by civic authorities).
Next Monday night, L’Aquila will stage a symbolic evening of “illuminations” in a ceremony to mark the first anniversary of the earthquake. All over selected sections of the old historical centre of L’Aquila, lights will be turned on in a symbolic gesture intended to suggest that the city can move from the darkness of the present moment to a brighter future.
A year on, various groups of environmentalists, architects, professionals and citizens of the city feel frustrated not only with the slow pace of the reconstruction of this medieval city but above all with the direction that reconstruction has thus far taken. Candlelight processions will wind their way through the city as ordinary “Aquilani” attempt to reclaim, if only for a night, their old town.
Architect Claudio Perrotti of the L’Aquila-based group Collettivo 99, a group of young architects and engineers, puts it this way: “The idea of this anniversary and of the various protests that we have staged recently is simply to meet one another, talk to one another and to work together in order to create that sense of citizenship that serves as a way of binding us together so that we don’t get discouraged by this difficult situation.”
The focal point of the “difficult situation” remains the old town. Twelve months on, it remains eerily empty, buried under an estimated 4.5 million tones of rubble. The Aquilani fear their city is in danger of becoming a latter-day Pompei, forever frozen in time.
Restoring the city centre could take up to 10 years, or perhaps longer, and may require an estimated expenditure of €15 billion. Only in recent weeks, and only after a series of Sunday “wheelbarrow” protests, which saw concerned citizens themselves move a tiny amount of the rubble, have authorities finally sent in firemen to begin the great clean-up. In the meantime, much of the post-earthquake effort (and funds) have been concentrated in 19 brand new, seismic-proof centres built around L’Aquila and now home to 17,000 people. (Another 7,000 people are still living in hotels on the Adriatic coast, while 4,000 are in temporary Red Cross huts.)
This has been a hard year for many Aquilani, frustrated by either having lost their homes or by not being allowed to return to their still standing, slightly damaged ones. In the meantime, they fear the reconstruction effort has been derailed in the direction of building speculation, while the law is moving with predictable slowness when it comes to establishing either penal or civic responsibility for the loss of life.
Despite all that, L’Aquila intends to turn the lights on next Monday evening. As Claudio Perrotti puts it: “It is a question of reclaiming our identity.”
