Morning Lineup – April 6

With all the recent news about earthquakes shaking the Western Hemisphere, most notably in Haiti and Peru, and this week along the Mexico/California border, it’s understandable when we tend to forget quakes that occurred a year ago.  But it was one year ago today that an earthquake shook central Italy and hit the medieval city of L’Aquila especially hard.  (See the Firegeezer report HERE.)

Reuters image

While that earthquake killed “only” 300 people, the damage to the region was immeasurable, especially if you take into account that some of the oldest buildings and artifacts in the western civilization are to be found in  that area.  More than 10,000 buildings were destroyed, and 1,500 churches, where towns usually store their prized artworks, were damaged.  L’Aquila was so heavily damaged that the entire city was quarantined because of the instability of almost every building in the ancient town.

Unfortunately, Italy’s central government is perpetually paralyzed and today, one year later, L’Aquila is still off-limits for its residents who are fed up and restive over the fact that nothing has been done to rehabilitate their city and make is safe for them to return home.  This video report shows the sorry state of affairs there:

Let’s be grateful that we haven’t reached the state – yet – where we are unable to recover from disasters like this. Although we have noticed a few localities here in the U. S. that are beginning to look like L’Aquila and acting like Rome, collecting taxes while never spending of public safety.  Stay vigilant.

Now let’s get this equipment checked out.  I need to get some more coffee started.  A lot of things happening today, so we’ll meet back in the day room in a little while.

Also on FireGeezer…

• Morning Lineup – November 6 – November 6, 2011