Earthquake for Canadians

Ho scritto a due amiche canadesi un resoconto della mia ultima permanenza a Camerino, la sera del terremoto e il giorno dopo.
Da brave canadesi, anche se naturalizzate, gli è sembrato talmente ben scritto che mi hanno risposto "I had goosebumps when reading your story!" e "I think you missed the profession, you should consider a creative writing for example".

Last Wednesday, during the first earthquake, I was in Camerino, which is very close to the epicenter. It is a typical historic small town of middle Italy, full of churches and former monasteries, and houses build of rocks. The town center is on top of a steep hill, with high walls and superb views on the countryside. Luckily the math department is in a relatively new building on the slope of the hill, not directly under the walls or close to ancient buildings. I was there with other academic people during the first shake. We ran out and were a bit worried, but still thinking the conference we were attending would take place the next day.
There was a second, stronger, shake a couple of hours later. We were having dinner in a bar, luckily again outside the historic center. We were really worried now.
I slept in a car with my former advisor, who is Italian but has been living in France for 15 years. The "true Italian" people still preferred to sleep inside the math building since it was raining and a bit cold; they preferred to have more room and electric power to charge their phones. I preferred to have nothing above my head! We had also tried to go to the sport center, where the emergency service was preparing camping beds for the population. But there was such a crowd that we preferred to go away and avoid potential panic attacks with people trying to escape and stepping on each other.
The day after that I ran into my bed and breakfast and out to get my things. I had tried to go into it the night before, but I was shaking and I saw a small crack in the wall plaster and got scared.
Then we tried to retrieve my advisor's car, that was in a parking lot in the center. But the old town had been evacuated already and the streets were closed for safety reasons. A bell tower, some roof tiles and some parts of walls had collapsed.
We had an experience in the lovely Italian bureaucracy: my advisor wanted to give his car keys to the rescuers and go away soon by train.
But they didn't want to take the key and told him to register in the list of people who wanted to access the center to get their belongings. So he did, and he spent 2 and a half hours in the queue INSIDE an office building, packed with people. This procedure was organized by the "civil protection", that takes control of the emergency operations in these cases. There was a minor shake when he was inside and he was terrified that people could panic and step on each other.
We were with other two people, one of whom had a car and was driving to the coast. We were getting a lift to a major town, since the trains had been stopped in order to check the safety of tunnels and bridges.
But the car owner is Italian, he knows how things work, and he talked to the firemen to be admitted in the center without having to register after the long queue. He wanted to get a few things from his room. In fact, as most academic people in Camerino do, he lives somewhere else and has a room in the center of Camerino, where he stays during the week. He had to wait where the road was closed, so we were missing all possible train connections from the coast to Trento and Milano. So we took a lift from another guy to the local train station. In the meantime the trains had begun to circulate again. We got on a local train that was an hour late and was not moving at more than 20 km/h for safety reasons. The last bit of fear was when the train stopped just before a small bridge and the conductor somehow checked the conditions before deciding that it was safe to pass.
By the way, this was the day of my birthday! :) I hope the next ones will be less eventful!

Now the university is closed, the engineers will check the safety of each building and this will take time. Also the students will have problems to get back to universities for a while, since many houses are not safe. Many people have been moved to hotels on the coast, while it becomes clear what to do and how long it will take. The politicians say they want to reconstruct everything, but the earthquake swarm is still going on and other powerful shakes are possible. To be precise, the swarm is continuing since August, when there was another earthquake, that killed about 300. It was clear then which towns had built quake-proof buildings (they had no deaths) and which ones had not done so (the village called Amatrice was completely destroyed and many died). In this regard, Camerino was doing a good job: after the quakes of 1979 and 1997, they had checked and reinforced all historic buildings. That's why they didn't collapse. But this is Italy, and things are randomly taken care of! Camerino is still above the average, and Trento is far above the average. I wish I could do something to bring Trento standards to the rest of Italy!