The community of the displaced kept together by mobile phones - 8 april 2009
L'AQUILA - We are displaced. It is written in our eyes if along the coast, where we found refuge, in bars they do not make us pay for breakfast, the iceman offers ( "Please take it as a little help from me ...") ice-creams for the children, shocked and with sad eyes, and at the inn they discount the bill ( "It would be 90, let's make 50 ..."). Displaced persons. A whole city community bound together by mobile phones. Those blessed mobiles that leaving their homes, everyone, really everyone (strange, even the elderly) tried to catch even before their shoes, coats and blankets which they could really have used. So, thanks to mobile phones, the displaced are trying to keep together a city torn by grief, rubble, fear of new tremors, true and false alarms, immediate and future concerns.
In that unforgettable night, after the first momentary black-out of lines gone crazy for the overload, the mobile phone was used to make sure of the survival of relatives and friends: "We are alive ... And you? Thank God. " and if someone's mobile was off, in the heart there was worry, which turned into anguish if the mobile rang with no answer. I could not get my mobile. Neither could my wife or my daughter. Nor could I - with my habit of directly saving numbers (never again "make me a ring", since Sunday night, I have been writing down numbers in a small paper address book), recall numbers from memory. I remembered one, a friend's, and borrowing a mobile, I managed to get the line and ask him to chain-call that we were alive, miraculously, but alive and if he could let me know about my dear ones, my parents, my brother's family, my brother-in-law's, friends: "Please, call me back on this number."
Only around 1 pm, after the night of terror and the tragic morning, I found the courage to return at my own risk, into my destroyed house. With my heart pulsing in my throat, climbing over piles of rubble and shattered furniture, I went directly for my wallet (for documents, credit card and some cash) and most of all my mobile. I found it. There were 86 missed calls and 56 messages: I called and responded to all. And an and on, calls and received calls, the battery went low. In the concentration at the Villa Comunale I found a girl with a mobile just like mine, who had discovered some electricity sockets next to the chalet bar. And she had also taken her mobile charger! Salvation! I started to call again. Without interruption, for the whole day yesterday as well. All calls the same. "Are you alive? This matters ... Yes, but we do not have anything any more ... What shall we do now? I do not know." All conversations culminating with the anguished question: what to do, now ... what tomorrow? Nobody has the answer. So much so that an impromptu forum is organized: "Make a round of calls and I'll do the same. Then let's speak again and establish the situation."
Between a forum and another, calls keep coming with moving offers of help. One dear friend, not able to do anything else, invites me into his empty house in Secinaro: "Here there was no damage: my house is your house". Thank you! And last night, after another strong shake, mobiles are again the litmus test of tragedy. "Did you feel it? Yes, it was beyond the fifth degree. In L'Aquila it must have been a new apocalypse." Are you in L'Aquila? Do you know if my house collapsed? Here on the coast? We felt it too: we are not safe from this nightmare."
In that unforgettable night, after the first momentary black-out of lines gone crazy for the overload, the mobile phone was used to make sure of the survival of relatives and friends: "We are alive ... And you? Thank God. " and if someone's mobile was off, in the heart there was worry, which turned into anguish if the mobile rang with no answer. I could not get my mobile. Neither could my wife or my daughter. Nor could I - with my habit of directly saving numbers (never again "make me a ring", since Sunday night, I have been writing down numbers in a small paper address book), recall numbers from memory. I remembered one, a friend's, and borrowing a mobile, I managed to get the line and ask him to chain-call that we were alive, miraculously, but alive and if he could let me know about my dear ones, my parents, my brother's family, my brother-in-law's, friends: "Please, call me back on this number."
Only around 1 pm, after the night of terror and the tragic morning, I found the courage to return at my own risk, into my destroyed house. With my heart pulsing in my throat, climbing over piles of rubble and shattered furniture, I went directly for my wallet (for documents, credit card and some cash) and most of all my mobile. I found it. There were 86 missed calls and 56 messages: I called and responded to all. And an and on, calls and received calls, the battery went low. In the concentration at the Villa Comunale I found a girl with a mobile just like mine, who had discovered some electricity sockets next to the chalet bar. And she had also taken her mobile charger! Salvation! I started to call again. Without interruption, for the whole day yesterday as well. All calls the same. "Are you alive? This matters ... Yes, but we do not have anything any more ... What shall we do now? I do not know." All conversations culminating with the anguished question: what to do, now ... what tomorrow? Nobody has the answer. So much so that an impromptu forum is organized: "Make a round of calls and I'll do the same. Then let's speak again and establish the situation."
Between a forum and another, calls keep coming with moving offers of help. One dear friend, not able to do anything else, invites me into his empty house in Secinaro: "Here there was no damage: my house is your house". Thank you! And last night, after another strong shake, mobiles are again the litmus test of tragedy. "Did you feel it? Yes, it was beyond the fifth degree. In L'Aquila it must have been a new apocalypse." Are you in L'Aquila? Do you know if my house collapsed? Here on the coast? We felt it too: we are not safe from this nightmare."