Only hours before the world remembered with mixed feelings, the explosion of the first hydrogen bomb on a Pacific atoll fifty years ago, another explosion took place on the other side of the world. When the United States tested its first H-bomb on the Marshall Island in 1952, the blast produced a light brighter than a thousand suns and a heat wave that was felt over 30 miles away.
The explosion last Thursday, in which an earthquake shattered the calm of a remote Italian village, was on the face of it, not in the least on the same scale. However for the families whose 26 young children were crushed when their primary school collapsed on top of them, the savage explosion of pent-up energy in the earth beneath their feet was even more devastating. For them, their slain children shone far, far brighter than a thousand suns and the icy shock wave generated by their deaths will make them tremble and shiver for the rest of their lives. The awesome power of the H-bomb was a testament of man’s ingenuity. In hindsight, it can be seen that the sheer destructive power of this weaponry, which was soon also acquired by the Soviet Union, produced a superpower balance that staved off a third world war and gave half a century of relative peace.
The disastrous destruction of the primary school and its innocent inhabitants in the southern Italian village of San Giuiliano di Puglia is, by contrast, a testament to man’s greed and selfishness. Even before the Italian authorities initiate the inevitable long-winded official inquiry, it is clear what has happened. The original school which, by a tragic coincidence was built fifty years ago, was not constructed to withstand seismic shock of any kind. The area was declared not to be at risk, so expensive building regulations need not be applied. This decision flew in the face of history. All of southern Italy has experienced earthquakes throughout recorded history. That the local authorities waived the rules probably had much to do with the mafias which have long dominated the construction business. The building was therefore thrown together and was a tragedy waiting to happen.
The situation was compounded when a concrete second floor was added recently. It appears that this story was simply added to the existing, already dangerous structure, thus placing a lid onto what would shortly become a coffin for 26 helpless 6-year-old kids, their teacher and two other adults.
It is already being explained that poverty-stricken local authorities in this economically backward part of Italy, have generally been unable to inspect and repair public buildings in their care.
Yet it will be unjust if the government in Rome seeks to cast sole blame on local politicians. Six years ago, after an apartment block collapsed in Rome itself, with the death of 30 residents, it was revealed that since 1945, over three million Italian buildings of all kinds had been constructed in contravention of basic safety regulations, let alone in compliance with demanding rules governing earthquake survivability. Time and again when Italy has been struck by earthquakes, some of them quite minor, the scale of destruction has reflected this deeply criminal dereliction of crucial responsibility by builders, architects, officials and politicians.
It beggars belief that such conduct can occur in an allegedly modern state, a part of the European Union.
The problem with Italy is that it is a land where officially-inspired disasters are followed by official inquiries which, when they finally report, are succeeded by official inactivity. Small wonder that the average Italian voter is so deeply cynical about his political leaders.
