The Caldarelli Family

Earthquake: L'Aquila, Italy - Apr 06, 2009

The Caldarelli branch of our family tree (Chiara & Alexandra's paternal grandfather and above) comes from Santo Stefano Di Sessanio, about 20 km East of the city of L'Aquila, in the region of Abruzzo, Italy.

The magnitude 6.3 Earthquake epicentre was at (C) on map.
Letter from "Papa":

It seems yesterday's earthquake hit l'Aquila and Santo Stefano (where I was
born) and hit them hard!. We have heard from Zia Elisa and her husband who
are well and now safe in another town with one of their sons. We have not
yet heard from Diamante and Altero and Gustavo (my cousins) and their
families and my Zia Dea (Nonno's sister). We pray that they are well.
Dorothe, Nonna and I and I'm sure all of you ... especially David and Dana
who have been there ..are deeply saddened by the loss of life and the loss
of some of our rich heritage. Hope to hear of the safety of everyone
especially our dear relatives. 

It seems that S. Stefano was hit even harder than l'Aquila. They report the
loss of la Torra (tower) and la chiesa del la Madonna (church), both
structures from the middle ages. We have not heard of loss of life from
there. Fortunately there are very few people living there at this time of
year (approx 200) but it does include a couple of my grade 1 classmates and
2 or 3 relatives. Hope they are well.

Please have a look at our Honeymoon photos from Santo Stefano. You will see pictures of (and from) the Torra, the Chiesa della Madonna, L'Aquila, and more.

Some links showing post-earthquake photos and video

Torre Medicea - S. Stefano - Before and after the earthquake
Santo Stefano (before)View from high up - Described as "One of the most beautiful villages in Italy"
VIDEO [youtube] of someone examining the remains of the tower.
- A 10-minute documentary of Santo Stefano di Sessanio (before earthquake). [youtube]
- A much shorter tour, before earthquake. [youtube]

Good news! - Update April 15

It turns out that my second cousin Marco Mecoli did reply to my email on April 7 to confirm that our relatives are all ok. Unfortunately, his email was caught in the spam filter by mistake and I didn't see it until Zio Gustavo was able to phone Nonna this morning and I heard that an e-mail was sent, so I thought to check the spam folder.

Everyone is ok, but none of their homes in L'Aquila are safe to return to, and having so many people homeless in one area is a major problem. Zio Gustavo is waiting for an engineer to inspect their house at the edge of S. Stefano, to see if they can go live there for awhile.

Zia Dea was not managing well in the tent city, so she is now in a nursing home in Ofena. Zi'Altero works for either a health or insurance place (I'm not sure) and is working day and night to figure out what to do for everyone.

The Caldarelli Family

Good news! - Update April 15

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