For several nights, every night, you woke up at that time, lump in the throat and sweaty hands. 3.32, replies the clock and you sabbed. Every night. Why a earthquake It shakes you in your chest and horrify your eyes, because a peaceful sleep have never taken it again. Even when it is finished, even when everything has passed. Because, after all, it never really passed.
The Aquilani that earthquake of 2009 now have it inside it. The infinite cloud of smoke, the acrid smell of dust, the dark and the moon. They have it inside, exactly like the memories, postcard of a distant city, where thousands of children and teenagers make lessons in the containers, where you come across construction sites and barriers to delimit interminable jobs.
The Aquilani That earthquake of 2009, 3.32, They have it now inside. Even those who still have to be born, even those who have started to live in another city again, even those who closed bridges with an indecently painful memory.
The Aquilians that earthquake of 2009, 6 April 3.32, have it now inside. That fury that pulled everything down, those 6 months of low intensity shocks never really read as alarm bells. And that “strong blow”, as they will then call it, arrived in the middle of the night, like the most subtle of the thieves, to undress them of everything, even of life.
𝗟’𝗔𝗤𝗨𝗜𝗟𝗔… 𝗟𝗔 𝗣𝗜𝗨 𝗡𝗢𝗧𝗧𝗘 ‘𝗟𝗨𝗡𝗚𝗔 𝗟𝗨𝗡𝗚𝗔 At the end of this day a very long night will arrive … It is the night between 5 and 6 April, which here in L’Aquila, for 16 years, is not a night like the others … the mind of those who 16 years ago at 3.32 was in L’Aquila or in neighboring countries is invaded by thoughts and sad memories … the noise, the dark, the dust, the wounded, the screams, the tears … Lost a loved one do not restore and will never refrain … the memory of the 309 people who are no longer there will never be forgotten … let’s prepare for a long and sad night … to the anniversary of that dark night who 16 years ago changed the history of our city and the life of those who at that moment saw in a handful of seconds the world collapse on
Posted by Elio Ursini on Friday, April 4, 2025
An indelible tragedy (and many why)
The Aquilians, and the Italians, have that earthquake in it. Involuntary actors of a scene that seems to repeat itself indefinitely. Only in the 1900s, the 1908 Messina-Reggio Calabria earthquake caused 95 thousand deaths and became the most serious natural catastrophe in Europe in human memory. Then Avezzano, Belice and Friuli, Irpinia of 1980 and finally Central Italy of 2016.
A string of why and how, how could it happen, how is all this possible, when we ever learn, when it will end these announced massacres?
We don’t have the answers. But we, the answers, demand them.
