Magnitude 5.9
A SERIES OF REPORTAGES ON THE AFTERMATH OF THE 2012 EARTHQUAKES IN NORTHERN ITALY.
An ongoing project to give voice to my fellow citizens who have been hit by the quakes of the 20th and 29th May 2012.
WHY I DO THIS? Because we have been on the news for about a month after the main events. Then, silence. As if everything was finished, and everything was fine. I will never forget one thing: the faces of my friends, family, neighbors walking around tents camp like ghosts.
EPISODE 1: THE AFTERMATH – 2014
AWARDED BEST NATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FILM ON CIVIL RIGHTS AT VALLE D’ITRIA FILM FESTIVAL 2014
TRAILER – ENGLISH
Two years after the earthquake which hit an area over 100 kilometres wide in Northern Italy, dozens of towns are still finding it difficult to restart.
Magnitude 5.9 -The Aftermath is a journey in the crater, it’s the stories of their inhabitants, people who lost everything in 20 seconds. People who are still “waiting for facts, not just promises”, and also of people who helped, asking nothing in change.
Videographer: Silvia Storchi
Music Composer: Francesca Assorto
Music post-production: Simone Casella
Sound Editor: Lorenzo Branà
PUBLIC SCREENINGS
– ZAM Film Festival 2014, Milano, Italy
– Valle d’Itria Film Festival 2014, Locorotondo and Martina Franca, Italy
“A sincere, sensitive and intelligent testimony: a genre of documentary of which Italy and its memory are in exceptional need”
Tommaso Santuari, Director – ZAM Film Festival
FULL MOVIE – ENGLISH
FILM COMPLETO – ITALIANO
TRAILER – ITALIANO
EPISODE 2: THREE YEARS LATER – 2015
We are back on the streets in Emilia, three years after the earthquake. We talk about container houses, reconstruction, social responsibility, ruins disposal, asbestos and pollution, the return of oil drills, and bio-architecture as a possible solution to pollution, drilling activities and the lifting up of local economy.
Videographer: Silvia Storchi
Music and Sound Fx: Sam 0ne
TRAILER – ENGLISH
TRAILER – ITALIANO
FILM COMPLETO – ITALIANO
EPISODE 3: PETROLISED – 2015
FULL MOVIE – ENGLISH
Three years after two major earthquakes in Northern Italy and despite studies linked them to local drilling activities, not only do oil companies carry on drilling, the Region even increases the number of licences.
The title is inspired by Maria Rita d’Orsogna’s blog “NO all’Italia petrolizzata” (http://dorsogna.blogspot.sg) who is actively involved in research and divulgation on hydrocarbons in Italy.
At least, we should all start to get informed and ask questions.
Videographer: Silvia Storchi
Music and Sound Fx: Sam 0ne
EPISODE 4: THE LAST DROP – 2020
TEASER – ENGLISH AND ITALIAN
In spite of potential triggered seismicity and groundwater contamination, oil companies have never stopped drilling.
In northern Italy, a group of citizens who were left homeless by the last earthquakes, lead us to question environmental and people’s security around hydrocarbon activities and trust towards public institutions.
DIG PITCH FINALIST 2020 (DIG Awards – Documentari Inchieste Giornalismi)
Videographer: Silvia Storchi
Music: Nociva Project
MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF THE EARTHQUAKE
I was home in Fossoli, municipality of Carpi, on the 29th of May 2012. The day our lives changed forever.It was 9 am, a hot sunny day. All of a sudden, a thunder-like loud long noise.
My tea cup trembled, glasses shook and broke down in the cupboards in front of me, pots fell, I saw walls curving, I heard breaking glasses from neighboring houses too. We quickly ran out of the house, as stairs were shaking under our feet, up and down, left and right, probably jumping 20-30 centimeters, like at the fun fair.
Finally, outside. Buildings were curling in front of us as if they were made of paper. We could only stare and wait, hugging each other. Soon we found out phone lines were out of order. We didn’t know where our loved ones were and if they were ok. We had a walk around town. Not many buildings had been damaged actually, not yet. Though this was the second major earthquake in ten days, after a 5.9 Magnitude quake had destroyed entire towns just a few kilometers away.
I needed to go to the doctor on that day, I went anyways and found him outside. He gave me a prescription and I went to the local pharmacy. Only one person at a time was allowed inside, as the building didn’t look damaged yet but we were hit by continuous after-shakes. I got a cream for my eye and was advised not to stay in the sun. I had no idea yet that from that moment the sky would have become my roof.
1 pm. After waiting the whole morning outside, hoping for the after-shocks to decrease at least in frequency, we started to go back inside our house, carefully and timidly going to make some lunch.
1.30 pm. Again! A Magnitude 5.9 even stronger quake. Some of the longest 20 seconds in our lives. With this came the scary, sure awareness that we were not going to come back home for a long while. It was now time to set up a place outside for the night.
Most building in our town had resisted the first quake on the 20th of May and even the second one at 9 am on the 29th, but at 1.30 pm, 29th of May 2012, many of them had collapsed. In that moment we realized nothing was going to be the same anymore.
We set up some temporary camp sites, which inexorably and gradually became our new homes. Cars, vans, tents. Whatever was available. Every single green space around town became an improvised campsite. Those of us whose houses hadn’t collapsed, were able to go inside for quick “missions” -as we came to call them- to grab essential stuff like the tent, for example. The holidays tent which used to remind us of summer, fun, relax, seaside, came to represent destruction, struggle and fear.
For days and weeks, simple things like having a shower or reaching food had become an issue. We couldn’t trust going inside home. There was an after-shake every ten minutes and since we had had increasingly larger magnitudes over more than a week and the epicenters seemed to be moving gradually closer to us, we couldn’t trust nothing worse could have happened. For weeks, and months, w expected each after-shake to turn into a new larger quake.
Tap water was not drinkable anymore because gases had been released during the earthquake. This is a natural phenomenon, we were told. But just a few kilometers away they are carrying on oil drilling activities. Rumors spread quickly about possible responsibilities of those drilling activities. People noticed all the different quakes epicenters were located close to oil sites. But right now, in that moment, we had something more urgent to think about. At the end of May 2012, in Emilia, shops were either collapsed or closed down, and even getting food and water was becoming a problem.
We will always be thankful to all the volunteers who arrived on site even earlier than public aids, bringing their help, food, water, tents, any sort of good to help set up camps. Some people didn’t even have clothes as their house was collapsed. Most elders had never been in a tent before nor they were able to set it up. Though some unscrupulous people tried to make a profit out of our fear and confusion. I remember someone dressed up like local police, going around town warning experts had predicted another strong quake soon, advising everyone to remain outside. As no one was home, thieves could operate easily.
I remember feeling the earth boiling under us, hearing bubbles-like sounds and movements under the ground as I was trying to sleep on the ground inside the tent. Soon another after-shake would wake me up, I’d go outside to find many of us, once again, looking at each others, speechless.
Tents were safe places to sleep in, we knew this. However, we had become really sensitive to any low sound or vibration, and running outside had become the automatic response. We would stand up and run out from wherever we were, at the feeling of any little tremble or noise. Eventually this became a real psychological problem for some people, who kept jerking at the noise of every lorry passing by, even three years after these events.
Just after another strong quake happened on the 4th of June, the third one, I came back to London, where I used to live and work at that time. I remember my dad encouraging me to go, so “at least one of us will be safe” he said. I brought with me the automatic low vibrations-triggered fear. The ordinary noise of London underground trains continued to jerk me for a very long time, while days and weeks passed and I kept checking online updates on Italian quakes at least ten times every day.
During the aftermath my parents stayed in our old little camper van in the garden, so they could “look after the house”. Though the garden isn’t big and the van was really close to the building, if anything happened again. That worried me a bit but where else to stay anyways? Many people lived that way for months, even years.
Some of my aunties and cousins slept in their own cars. My brother, cousins and friends lived in tents for more than a month, my grandfather stayed in his house, cause he doesn’t care to die uncomfortable, he said.
Not many came back to their house. For months, even those whose houses were “habitable” were too scared to go back under a roof that could collapse any moment. We kept having plenty of after-quakes. Fear and uncertainty reigned. Lots of people left town, some went to stay “temporarily” at some relatives’ or friends’, and never came back. Some other had been given a tent or a hotel somewhere far.
The Emilia region is famous abroad for our lasagne and tortellini, for the ragù alla bolognese, our balsamic vinegar, Parmesan cheese, Ferrari, Maserati cars. They say people from Emilia are generous, hard workers, we don’t like to ask and feel sorry for ourselves, we rather lift our sleeves up, and work hard for what we need. That’s true, though in front of Nature’s power we felt powerless.
I will never forget the expressions on the faces of my neighbors walking around tents like ghosts. What will happen next? When is the next quake going to hit and will our house resist the next one? Is all this ever going to end? Most of our houses have been built by our grandfathers with lifetime efforts and savings, for their sons, daughters, grandchildren. They had invested everything on them. Now, they lost them.
Since that May 2012, I went back to Italy quite often. Though i noticed things didn’t look much different around, one, even two years later. Most buildings looked exactly the same, collapsed as they were. Everything looked static, frozen. There was only one difference: the amount of weeds finding their way through bricks and concrete. That’s when I started to ask questions. Why? How is this possible? We used to be one of the wealthiest regions in Italy. I had heard that funds had been allocated for reconstruction, but I couldn’t see any change. Where are people living now? And how are they?
Even worse: why does no one know about us? As little as 30 kms away, in Reggio Emilia, or 50 kms away, Bologna, people didn’t know about Fossoli, Rovereto, Novi, Cavezzo, Mirandola and all the little towns hit by the quakes. They didn’t know how we were still struggling and how we were living. We had been on the national news every day for the first month after the quakes, then disappeared. As we disappeared from the news we did disappear even from people’s minds. I felt we had been forgotten, yet two years later most people were still living on the streets, in caravan, container houses, even tents. We were all waiting for Government’s funding, we didn’t know how long for.
This is how the project Magnitude 5.9 was born from a need to tell our stories, to show our places, to give voice to those who weren’t heard. It started in 2014 with me walking around collapsed buildings, looking for people to answer my questions. It continues today as answers generate more questions and a need to get deeper into each story. Eight years have passed, some people have not found peace into their homes yet. Will it ever reach an end?
Silvia Storchi
