The door to my room opened just enough for a nine year old face to quietly peek in.
“I think I felt an earthquake,” Ingrid’s friend reported softly. They had been dancing across the hall on the side of the house closest to the construction site fifty yards away.
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” I told her, “those big trucks and earth movers can create a lot of vibration. Sometimes we feel it. Let the dancing continue!”
She didn’t seem convinced. After a second or two, though, Syria slid her stocking feet back across the hallway to the music and fun.
Fifteen minutes later the telephone rang. It was her mother, checking to make sure we were all right after the. . . terremoto and saying she’d be there soon to pick up her daughter.
I should’ve given the native Italian kid a little more credibility when talking seismic activity. Although apparently it’s occurred in New Hampshire I’ve never felt it myself. I remembered my brother’s story of last year how they’d had a quake outside D.C. in Virginia that lasted long enough for them to grab their two little girls and run outside. In our case—luckily—the shaking hadn’t lasted more than a few seconds and we didn’t have any noticeable aftershocks. Everything seemed fine. Although I still like to blame it on the daily construction nearby, maybe more truthfully it was just my naïveté that prevented panic and any initiation of proper safety procedure.
When Syria’s mother arrived the scene she painted was a little different. She’d been working in an elementary school well outside of Lucca and they’d all felt the quake and gone down under their desks initially before evacuating outside, many of the children crying in fear and confusion (I later read that many people here in town also evacuated into the streets from office buildings, restaurants, stores and homes. They got jostled out of their typical late afternoon activities and, when all seemed clear, found those familiar routines a little harder to jump back into). She wondered if the school buildings were safe in Lucca. Could they withstand a slightly stronger quake (undoubtedly the 2002 Molise Earthquake weighed heavily in her worries. An elementary school in San Giuliano di Puglia collapsed, killing half of the school’s student population of 51)? After processing the event with us for an hour or so she and Syria headed for home. That evening we got three calls in a row, two from mothers of Ingrid’s classmates and the last from the commune (local county) reporting that there would be no school the next day due to the earthquake.
The next morning I read that although the event registered fairly high on the Richter scale (5.4, which is considered a moderate earthquake) its origin was so deep (60 kilometers) that major damage would probably not have occurred. Wanting to be sure, however, so technicians could come in and check, schools would be closed. And, as we found out the next morning after biking into town to return some books and a couple of DVDs unsuccessfully to the library, so too would be town buildings and churches. Although these structures have stood for between four hundred and a thousand years any tremor could lead to a crack that could multiply and grow and potentially lead to destruction. Every year Italy experiences numerous earthquakes and while many adults may be familiar with them (though probably not used to them) they want to be as careful as they can, the L’Aquila Earthquake of 2009 in the region of Abruzzo (5.8 on the Richter scale but only 7 kilometers deep) a fresh and tragic reminder of their power. I definitely felt thankful that my first experience with an earthquake had come and gone relatively peacefully.
The same cannot be said for the cold snap that hit much of Europe the beginning of the month and has not yet left. When I arrived in Paris and stepped off OrlyBus at Denfert-Rochereau before walking to my accommodations I noticed the cold but welcomed it, a dry and refreshing energizer after spending the day in busses, a plane and the metro. When I found an Internet connection the night before returning to Lucca I saw that my wife had sent a message along with pictures of the kids and a new member of the family who was rather heavy, very, very white and sported a hairstyle that strongly reminded me of pasta.
School had been canceled on Wednesday, only five days after the earthquake, due to a snowstorm! She wondered if my flight would be okay while I wondered if enough would stick around for me to break out my skis and slide around the grassy fields just outside the walls (yes, no). Meanwhile, however, other sections of Italy were getting hit hard by the snow. Florence was covered. “Rome in Chaos” one newspaper printed in huge letters of the front page. Directly east of Tuscany lies Umbria and east of Umbria one finds Le Marche. Reporting from Urbino, a small UNESCO university hill town not far from the coast, a tv correspondant relayed that three meters (close to ten feet!) of snow had fallen. Reports of cold schools have been a regular feature in the papers, as has the call to lower the heat at home. While this may seem strange at first glance during a major cold snap, running out of fuel is a major concern for local officials. And, unfortunately, at least fifty people have died in the country as a result of the huge quantity of snow and colder than normal temperatures.
The weather warmed for a day but now the forecast calls for the weather to get colder again and for snow to return today and tomorrow. Long johns are on and snow chains wait in the back of the car if for some crazy reason I feel a need to test my skill manoevering through a bunch of already aggressive drivers, drivers who have maybe driven once or twice in their lives in snow. The weatherman says central regions like Emilia Romagna and Abruzzo will be hardest hit and that this system will be worse than the last bout of snow and cold.
We don’t have a shovel, but this is Tuscany. It couldn’t snow that much, right? Everyone told us that snow is extremely rare here, that they were all surprised last year and the year before when it snowed once. Meanwhile back home in New England (and in Minnesota) they’ve been experiencing record low snowfalls for the season, cross-country ski racers relying more and more on artificially made snow to train and compete.
Now if we could just get better at predicting earthquakes, send out those telephone calls to keep everyone home before they happen so we’re ready to head outside when we feel the beginning of the slightest tremor. Or I could try listening better. And that’s one of many lessons I’ve learned here. At least as far as earthquakes go, never brush aside the observations of a nine year old Tuscan girl.
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