Earthquakes as Traumatic Social Fractures
Giulia Scandolara
Aside from geophysical earthquakes as disasters, there are many other indirect earthquakes. They are generated in the aftermath of tremors and testify to the complete lack of attention to structural and human frailties. This gaze is missing both “in times of peace” as well as when the tremors have already destroyed the territory. During the last strong earthquake in Italy in 2016, one can observe the social destruction that forever crushed the stricken population. We are talking today about inhabitants that have seen their house collapse, losing as many as seven relatives. We are still talking even now about those who have lost their jobs because of the tremors and the total lack of reconstruction. 1 When it comes to earthquakes, in general, one enters the depths of trauma once, twice, a thousand times, always in different ways. It happens with the collapses, during emergencies. Then again, in the face of decrees and bureaucracy, when one realizes that one is alone against strong powers and insurmountable technicalities.
The earthquake within the earthquake is the forsaking of its citizens by the Italian government, the profound absence of democracy for those who remain. Earthquakes return again and again, but in Italy they remain a cultural taboo. “Seismic risk” does not echo the word “prevention”, but only by emergency “business”, under whose surface lurk personal interests, territory control, speculation in construction materials (such as cement), and division of the locals.
Despite having experienced ten strong earthquakes in only fifty years, still today we take care of the earth that shakes after disaster has struck. 2 In 2016, four regions were impacted—Umbria, Marche, Lazio, and Abruzzo—and 138 municipalities. Three lethal days are remembered: August 24, October 26, and a maximum magnitude of 6.5 reached on October 30. The end balance is 303 dead, with an estimated twenty-three billion Euros in structural damage, not counting the 80.000 construction sites which never opened, an obscure reconstruction sum. “Obscure” is indeed the term for speaking of seismic events in Central Italy. Even though that region is defined as “the biggest construction site of Europe,” 3 it is literally invisible to Italians themselves, not considered by national institutions. Since earthquakes as a topic do not exist, the pain of those caught up in these catastrophes is invisible.
If we want to think in social terms about the destruction that still persists, we cannot speak but of an endless series of interruptions. These interruptions are the true map of the territory. This area of rubble and pain is referred to as “the seismic crater.” Few people know the meaning of this word outside of its boundaries. The first fracture is indeed linguistic. The crater is thereby separated from the rest of the country. This detachment has been accentuated by Italian journalists as well who, throughout the years, have treated earthquakes as a local phenomenon—and so they have remained—using a lexicon comprehensible only to the victims of the disaster.
Another Social Discontinuity
For four years, the topic of “social trauma” has been entirely omitted from treatments of the territory as if it were not an element of reconstruction. Today, almost all inhabitants live with an open wound, a tangle of incommunicability. In the meantime, one talks about reconstructing cement structures while bureaucracy has proven to be an insurmountable psychological obstacle. More than ever the trauma has become an inseparable part of the environment, of the social body of the impacted citizens. In addition to the tremors and the trauma, the catastrophe within the catastrophe is also the relational sundering of the neighborhoods. Not having one’s house reconstructed has meant for those affected by the earthquake not having peace of mind in everyday life. In addition, there is the psychological trauma itself. An empty normality was created after the tremors due to the SAE (Soluzioni Abitative di Emergenza), Emergency Housing Solutions.
The urban planning of places is now wrecked and, with it, relational zoning as well. The citizens survive on social media, genuine outposts where they can remember their old neighborhood, publish photos of that which no longer exists. It is in virtuality that earthquake survivors have found refuge, going beyond the small square footage of emergency housing solutions. Meanwhile, today, almost everyone is fighting against one another in a “crater” that keeps sinking. Only a few are managing to row in a common direction. How to get oneself to safety in a disaster is a story that has yet to be written. However, the misfortune one flees from is no longer the earthquake, but the desolation of a territory where there are no allies.
Mafia Infiltrations, Division of Territory
The control of places has been perpetuated on several levels. Those few who have remained and would like to discuss anew the activities of local institutions run the risk of retaliation, impediments to reconstructing their homes. There are many earthquake survivors from Norcia who explain it well. The pain becomes internal and the anger is deaf. The shadow of mafia infiltrations lurks in the few construction sites that do spring up. Code of silence on top of a code of silence after the tomb-like silence of the press—the invisibility of the earthquake is deliberately constructed by corrupt politics. There has been no shortage of mayors investigated for corruption or for having pocketed donations. 4 Nor is there a lack of consent to the mafia among the citizens themselves. This is why there is still no talk of the earthquake beyond its borders. Removing the veil from the earthquake means exposing all the tones and forms that mafia speculation has managed to attain here.
Suspended in Trauma and Waiting for a “Re-Solution”
Right after the tremors in 2016, the Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing association (E.M.D.R.) intervened on several occasions in an attempt to contain the trauma. There is an interstice, however, where pain gets bogged down; and it belongs neither to psychology nor to any other method intent on healing mind and body. We ask ourselves, now that those impacted by the earthquake still remain shattered, whether there can ever be a way the citizens might heal independently from any method. The purpose of the E.M.D.R. sessions was to alleviate the effects of trauma. The method is scientifically proven by studies and publications. And yet—and this is what one must consider—it is not always possible for meaning to return to existence. With the tremor on August 24, Amatrice (Lazio) lost more than 300 inhabitants in just a few seconds. Relative to the psychotherapeutic sessions, I was confronted with a local earthquake, asking myself whether this kind of therapy was always possible. R., who accepted to undergo a couple of therapy sessions, eventually stopped coming. “It seemed like nonsense to me. You lose everything. When you greet your father the evening before and then you find him under the rubble with your mother, when you turn around 360 degrees to try to understand what to do but all you see is rubble, you’re lost. Your life is completely changed, and you don’t understand what you have to do. Yeah, all this is too much. E.M.D.R? Not for Amatrice.” A question arises, a social rather than a psychological one: How do you survive trauma?
Four years later, according to psychologists, the moment presents itself when one remains alone with one’s pain. No national institution has tried to tackle this internal fracture—one half in the devastated environment, the other in the bodies of the people. Only those who have lost everything can understand how one lives with the challenge of being confronted daily with broken things, creating a community from the bottom of the abyss upwards.
The inconvenient voices of those who for years continue to live with broken promises are perhaps the only voices that can, if not explain the earthquake, at least make plain the stratified impossibilities, making known the impossibility of belonging. There has yet to be a moment dedicated to a walk among the emptied places, deprived of houses, after the tremors. The neighborhoods are now long strips of empty land where the rubble has sometimes been removed, other times not. One has to cross the old promenade in Amatrice in order to understand physically what we are talking about, perceiving the life razed to the ground, left and right down the long avenue. There was no time, no way, for the people to make peace or make war with the earth that shook, pulling together the strings of a collective mourning that is still today waiting to be seen and heard. For this ill-born laboratory of care only the citizens remain, custodians of a story that has yet to be written, a story made of elaboration, and of healing, perhaps.
1. Cf. Sisma Centro-Italia, 4 anni dopo. Mattarella: “Ricostruzione è incompiuta”. Conte ad Amatrice: “Processo complesso, fare presto”, Il Fatto Quotidiano. Aug. 24, 2020: https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2020/08/24/sisma-centro-italia-4-anni-dopo-mattarella-ricostruzione-e-incompiuta-conte-ad-amatrice-processo-complesso-fare-presto/5908524/ (last accessed Dec. 1st, 2020).
2. Cf. Terremoti in Italia negli ultimi 50 anni, Eventi Estremi e Disastri. Centro Euro Mediterraneo di Documentazione. May 31, 2016: http://www.eventiestremiedisastri.it/eventi-estremi/terremoti-fenomeni/art_05/ (last accessed Dec. 1st, 2020).
3. Ricostruzione Centro Italia cantiere più grande d’Europa, ma nella legalità, Umbria Journal. Dec. 17, 2019: https://www.umbriajournal.com/terremoto/ricostruzione-centro-italia-cantiere-piu-grande-deuropa-ma-nella-legalita-340914/ (last accessed Dec. 1st, 2020).
4. Cf. concerning the mayor of Norcia, Nicola Alemanno: Giacomo Salvini: Norcia, il sindaco Nicola Alemanno (Fi) indagato per corruzione. I pm: “Autorizzò apertura filiale banca e poi ne divenne socio, Il Fatto Quotidiano. Mag. 15, 2020: https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2020/05/18/norcia-il-sindaco-nicola-alemanno-fi-indagato-per-corruzione-i-pm-autorizzo-apertura-filiale-e-poi-ne-divenne-socio/5805116/ (last accessed Dec. 1st, 2020), and concerning the mayor of Visso, Giuliano Pazzaglini: Visso, il sindaco Pazzaglini indagato per peculato: contestate le donazioni per il sisma, Picchio News. Oct 21, 2019: https://picchionews.it/politica/visso-donazioni-per-il-sisma-il-sindaco-pazzaglini-indagato-per-peculato (last accessed Dec. 1st, 2020).