On Monday April 6th, at 3:32am local time (01:32 GMT), L'Aquila, capital city of the central Abruzzo region, 60 miles northeast of Rome, was stricken by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake [en]. Even if the country is not new to such tragedies, this is Italy's worst earthquake in three decades. The latest figures include more than 230 people dead, 1,000 people injured (100 of them seriously), and 17,000 people left without homes. Overall 26 towns and villages have been hit [it], and some virtually destroyed. The trembling was felt all over central Italy, including Rome, where it was even captured on film by the TV show “Big Brother” 24/7 cameras [it].

Rude awakening

The first pictures appeared immediately on Flickr and many more were uploaded during the day.

Photo by healinglight on Flickr

Similarly, the first news was transmitted by local Twitter users (particularly with hashtags #italy and #terremoto) and quickly spread throughout the world, thanks to services such as Breaking Tweets [en] - even before the satellite news channels broadcasts.

And in the early morning hours more news and comments began to pour in on Facebook. On the group “Terremoto in Abruzzo” [it] (Earthquake in Abruzzo) Chiara urges people “not not leave them alone” and writes:

l'Aquila distrutta… speravo fosse un sogno ed invece è tutta realtà… non ci posso ancora credere… mi si stringe il cuore… ma l'Aquila ritornerà ad essere bella come prima ed a emozionarci ancora.. Sono vicina a tutti…

Many ready to help right away

On the same “Terremoto in Abruzzo” group, someone from Messina, a city in Sicily, says he's ready to hit the road to go there and help, just like many others:

vorrei partire come volontario x dare un aiuto anche io.. qualcuno che è della provincia di messina sa dirmi come fare?? chi contattare? fatemi sapere… grazie

On this first day alone, on Facebook there will be about 500 different groups, with many appeals to solidarity and active action - just like this one from Daniela in Reggio Emilia:

in questo drammatico momento di immenso dolore, mi rendo disponibile ad ospitare una famiglia presso la mia casa, offrendo loro un alloggio confortevole, e tutto il mio sostegno morale.

Also Alessandra has in her heart the many homeless people and writes:

Facciamo un gruppo in cui le persone che hanno più di una casa si offrono di mettere a disposizione un'abitazione per gli sfollati del terremoto. Io sono disponibile.
COME CI POSSIAMO MUOVERE?

Citizen media help to cope with tragedy

Daylight brings into sharp focus the magnitude of the tragedy and the web is the preferred place to disseminate information worldwide in a split second. On YouTube, Mastrostyle uploads a slideshow with several moving photos. Also Lukalove creates another poignant slideshow using the online software slide.com. Several people ready with video- or cell-cameras descend into the wreckage to talk with the victims and people involved in the rescue efforts.

Here is a video showing a girl just extracted from the rubble being being taken in an ambulance. While the following video includes some interviews [it] with people in a makeshift tent in L'Aquila:

Criticism of mainstream media coverage

The event seems to make everybody very tense and sensitive. Many cannot even tolerate small mistakes from major news outlets online. The pensierispettinati blog [it] noticed that the photo gallery from L'Aquila published by the daily Corriere della Sera website includes one photo that doesn't belong to this tragedy: it's a picture of the May 2008 earthquake in Sechuan, China. They remove the offending picture, only to inadvertently post, shortly after, another picture related to rescue efforts in an earthquake in Turkey.

Several bloggers criticized [It] another major newspaper website, Repubblica.it for somehow exploiting the tragic event, boosting their advertisements and banners among its reports.

An avoidable tragedy?

Many netizens are also claiming that the earthquake was somehow expected: being an area at risk, the Abruzzo region was monitored closely. In fact, only a week earlier, using his own invention of gas radon measurements, Giampaolo Giuliani, a scientist related to the National Nuclear Physics Institute, had even predicted a very strong earthquake in a nearby city and alerted local officials about his findings. But the Head of the Civil Protection Agency, Bertolaso, immediately accused him of alarmism, threatening to sue him if he kept talking about it - so Giuliani kept his mouth shut.

The story is still very much alive in the blogosphere. Enzo Giarrittiello, on his blog La voce di Kayfa writes [it]:

Ora che purtroppo le sue previsioni si sono avverate, seppure con una settimana di ritardo rispetto a quanto aveva inizialmente ipotizzato, non sarebbe il caso di stanziare fondi per favorire la ricerca di Giuliani anziché mandarlo in prigione? Dando per scontato che le sue teorie sono pure illazioni, senza nemmeno cercare di capire i principi su cui si fondano, non ci si comporta in maniera oscurantista assumendo lo stesso atteggiamento dei censori medievali?

On Facebook, many groups were launched in solidarity with this researcher, while in a few hours more than 100 comments were posted on a related story on Repubblica.it [it], including one comment referring to a 2005 online forum detailing the method utilized by Giuliani [it] to forecast earthquake and his international operative connections.

On the other hand, the official scientific community refuted the validity of his predictions, including an interview with the director of the National Nuclear Physics Institute, where he states: “Giuliani doesn't work for my Institute and on this issue we need to be very careful when we say something publicly.”

What next?

Unfortunately it seems inevitable to have controversial issues overshadowing the actual tragedy in such circumstances. Several Italian media sources and netizens are already debating the reconstruction plan and funding, with an overall cost estimated at about 1.2 billion euros. However, the situation on the ground is still far from over. Many fear the death toll will rise even more. Rescue workers are working non-stop looking for survivors: a 98-year-old grandmother was found alive Tuesday after being buried for 30 hours. In the same night temperatures fell to 39 degrees in L'Aquila, dipping to near freezing at higher altitudes. And the area has been rattled by more than 200 tremors, some of them as higher as 5.3 magnitude.

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This post has been co-authored by Stefano Ignone.

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