Italy and the Terramoto

The "terramoto" is an old and devastating problem in central and southern Italy. From what I read a fault between Europe and Africa runs right down the Italian spine and is responsible for the formation of the Appenines.

A book I'm reading now, "The Italian Emigration of our Times" by Robert Foerster from the Harvard sociology department and published in 1919 (so 13 years after my dad came over), states:

"To indicate (by way of example) the recent earthquakes of Calabria alone: those of 1854, 1870, 1894, 1905, 1907 and, worst of all, 1908, accomplished a disheartening round of destruction of life and property. Today, ten years after the demolition of Messina, the city, its little wooden suburb notwithstanding, still is a pile of ruins"

I was actually in Italy at the time of the earthquake in 1997 and saw the ruins of the Basilica of Santo Francesco in Assisi. It was very discouraging for my family.

Dr Foerster adds:

"The general destruction of capital is pervasive. Of all consequences however the most serious is probably psychological, the creation of a mood of helplessness, or even worse, of apathy, restraining at once the. impulse to progress and the energies needed for accomplishment."

He counted it as one of the many reasons responsible for the diaspora of the Italian peasants or the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The destruction is particularly frightful in buildings which are very old and constructed of stone. As I learned when I lived in San Francisco (named of course after the same wonderful man as was the Basilica) most of destruction of the 1906 earthquake was caused by fire. It was only the few brick structures in the downtown that collapsed, whereas the great majority of wooden buildings were flexible and stood through the shake only to be destroyed in the great fire that followed.

Here is a photo of the house where my father was born in 1904, in Palazzo d'Assisi, Italy. Most of the damage to La Casa Vecchia as we refer to it was caused by earthquake.