This is amazing: I just heard this remarkable and happy story, amid so many heartbreaking ones, coming out of a tiny village near L'Aquila, Italy where they experienced the devastating earthquake earlier this week. A 98-year-old woman, who was pulled-out alive, said she spent the time (not knowing if she would live or die) crocheting as she awaited being rescued.
Amid Italy's earthquake rubble, 98-year-old woman is pulled free
John Hopper in L'Aquila
The Guardian, Wednesday 8 April 2009
Whatever faults Maria D'Antuono may have, wasting time is not among them. The 98-year-old villager, from Tempera, near L'Aquila, yesterday became one of the latest survivors to be dragged from the rubble left by Monday's devastating earthquake in the Abruzzo region of central Italy. For 30 interminable hours, she lay below the ruins of her house, a few miles from the epicentre.
So what did she do to while away the time, not knowing whether she would live or die as rescue workers dug towards her? The answer, it seems, was "crochet". According to the Ansa news agency, D'Antuono was pulled from the rubble to cheers from the crowd and briefly answered questions from a reporter for Silvio Berlusconi's Mediaset television network before she was taken to hospital. Asked how she had passed the time since her house had collapsed on her, she reportedly said she had been busy with her hook and wool.
Living here in Southern California and having lived through two moderate quakes and hundreds of smaller ones, my heart goes out to the Italians. It is extremely disconcerting to have the ground underneath your feet, which you think of as "solid ground", shake, rattle and roll and bring such devastation and death. You never get used to it.
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