Full emergency in Friuli again

Press, 18 September 1976, Page 7

Full emergency in Friuli again

NZPA-Reuter Udine Emergency measures to help thousands of victims from the carthquake-dex astated Friuli area of northern Italv have swung into full operation.

As a new series of 49 tremors hit the already-shat-tered region, holiday resorts opened their hotels, hospitals, bars and restaurants to provide food, aid, and accommodation for the fleeing population. The new tremors on Thursday came after four and a half months of sporadic shocks set off by the May 6 earthquake, which killed nearly 1000 and left an estimated WO,OOO homeless. The Regional President (Mr Arnaldo Pittoni) has appealed to people and'organisations in the area to give rooms and caravans for the thousands still with little or no shelter. Officials said that some 8000 people have sought refuge in the Adriatic resort of

JLignano, another 4000- in Grado, and the State-run’. 1 5 Energy Commission an-ii - nounced that it had opened;! >|up 100 chalets in the moun-li * tain resort of Borca di Ca->i ? dore. ‘ ( The death toll in recent! v tremors reached 11 on! I ' Thursday night, three bodies '•being dug out of a landslide 'ion Mount Biveza. Two of I “the victims were a father < -‘and his 10-year-old son. Eight persons died during , t Wednesday’s tremors, three _!of them of heart attacks. ( According to the people of s'Gemona, worst hit in the 1 e May earthquake, and again 1 r; almost completely flattened ‘ this week, the Government ■ ei has not done enough to i -1 speed up reconstruction f! work. |;

“We were promised prefabricated houses, but until | now we have only seen i shacks going up,” one man I said, pointing to a dozen I new but drab-looking huts i directly beneath the steep j rocky slopes of Monte Ciamipon. The 1700-metre mountain is deeply scarred by landslides which thundered down during the latest tremors. Regional government officials in Udine said it was almost impossible to lay concrete foundations for proper houses while the earth was still shaken by tremors. Most of the houses in the villages are beyond repair, reduced to heaps of rubble, fallen roofs, twisted iron, land wooden beams.