The cities and towns devastated by the earthquakes in central Italy will be rebuilt and the work will be done “by the book”, prime minister Matteo Renzi said on Monday in his weekly update on his website. “There were no deaths this time and this makes us very glad. However, damages to the housing, economic, cultural and religious heritage are huge”, Renzi wrote in his e-news message. “These hamlets represent the identity of Italy: we will have to rebuild them all, fast and well”, he added. “Thanks to the control exerted by the public opinion and by all the Italian citizens, not a cent will be wasted. We will have to show who we are: we are people who, differently from the past, can complete public works without any waste and thefts of public money”, Renzi also wrote.
The prime minister then said that, before such a disaster, political differences do not count. “We will rebuild everything, all together. There are moments in which political differences are worth nothing and we all work to achieve the same objective”, Renzi wrote. He then described the necessary steps to take to better face the emergency. “What we have to do is difficult but clear. First of all, we must secure the affected areas. We will talk about it at the extraordinary Cabinet meeting that we called for later this afternoon”, Renzi explained. “We can’t set up tents that will stay there through the winter, under the snow. There is room for everybody in the hotels, but many people do not want to leave their hometowns, not even if it is just for a few weeks”, he then noted, adding: “Therefore, we will have to handle as best as we can this first phase, the emergency”.
“Now our top priority must be to give back some sort of serenity to the people from the affected areas. Doing it will be a very hard task”, he then highlighted. “After all, whoever even just felt the shock on Sunday morning from hundreds of kilometres away will realize the suffering of those who live in those areas”, he also wrote. “Those who were frightened by the earthquake and live far from the epicenter can only imagine the terror felt by the people who have been living with continuous shocks for two months now”, he concluded.
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