AMATRICE, ITALY -- Yesterday was the first time I saw a dead body. Not just one, but many. They were in bodybags but I could still make out the figure. I could still make out bent limbs and dried blood. The smell reached deep and engrained itself in my nose for hours after I left.
A temporary morgue was set up in town for the families to identify their loved ones. Twelve tents one next to the other holding eight to ten bodies. Many had already been brought out and airlifted to Rieti, a neighboring town, to a more permanent and refrigerated morgue for further inspections.
A black tarp was the only barrier separating the dead from their families who were waiting in agony for their names to be called out in order for them to identify the corpses. A priest by the name of Padre Savino brought me into the confined area. Out of the 12 tents two of them were the children's tents. The little lifeless bodies waited patiently for their parents to find them.
He explained most of the children had already been taken away. The problem was with two other tents labelled 'unidentified'. He continued by saying the corpses in those tents were unrecognizable to the point that the authorities asked [him] to look at the post mortem photos in the hopes that he could find something to base their identity on. "I knew everyone in this town, when they asked I agreed because I wanted to help as much as possible... yet the feeling I had when seeing those photos was surreal. Faces that weren't faces anymore, bodies that weren't bodies..."
Family members had to walk into every tent, open every bodybag, if lucky, they identified their loved ones relatively quickly. The less lucky had to walk into the 12 tents and open eight to ten bodybags in order to find whoever they were looking for.
I saw a woman come out of the tenth tent with her hands to her face about to collapse. Her son grabbed her just before she hit the floor. He held her to his chest and with one hand he held her head. They cried and looked at each other in desperation. Pope Francis himself called the Bishop of Rieti expressing his closeness to all the victims. The Pope also called upon an outdoors funeral without the caskets, as there are so many bodies and simply not enough space.
Yesterday evening firefighters were still looking for a family of five stuck under their collapsed home. It felt strange walking passed that house, knowing under there somewhere was a family. I walked around it trying to grasp a picture of how beautiful that house must have been. Yet all I could see were beds hanging from rooms, bathtubs broken in half, hanging from the second floor.
It's the third day after the earthquake and challenges haven't eased. There are too many bodies for the town to handle. The unrecognized bodies are starting to decompose, and the bodycount keeps rising with not enough caskets to hold them. The survivors have just been notified that they will most likely be housed in tents for the foreseeable future. Many of them are elderly, and winter is not far off. There have been frequent aftershocks in the night, this morning and a few during the day as well, causing further damage to buildings still standing.
The town is relying on one bridge for the next few months. If that one collapses too then Amatrice will be isolated. The overall question everyone keeps asking themselves is "what will become of us?"
No one knows quite yet.