When I first, excitedly, mentioned to a northern Italian friend that I’d seen a house I liked, he tried to put me off the idea. “But that's an earthquake zone!” Disheartened, I looked online to see if what he said was true, and gave special instructions to the people doing the survey to quantify the risk.
It is in an earthquake zone, I discovered, but so is the rest of peninsular Italy.
The city in the base of the valley has been hit many times, with tragic effects mostly in centuries past. My own village has escaped for the most part, it seems. It was affected by an huge earthquake in 1984 that destroyed many buildings across the country. My future house was damaged, and goverment funds allowed structural work to be done, including a new roof.
Meanwhile the survey was confusing. After some insistent telephone calls, I was able to make out that I could, if I wanted further earthquake protection, put new floors in with a wire web inside (to make them more flexible I assume). However, this is neither required or even recommended. It would not prevent the house from falling down should a particularly large earthquake happen.
I was loath to pull up our fragile old floor tiles, so I decided to see what the requirements are for insurance. If an earthquake was determined to shake down my house, at least I wouldn’t lose everything. But would anyone insure my house in an earthquake zone?
Certainly. My own bank, BancoPosta, didn’t even need to know where the house was. Earthquake damage was covered.
After careful study of the earthquake maps:
http://kharita.rm.ingv.it/Gmaps/rec/index.htm
http://www.ingv.it/terremoti/terremoti.html
we decided to go ahead. After all, I was unlikely to find a house in the Appenines that wasn’t at risk of the shakes.
We’ve now been in the area for almost two months, and our first earthquake happened yesterday afternoon. We didn’t notice a thing.
Happily, the house is still standing, although Concenzo did hurry to get the new lintels in place today. Can’t be too careful.
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