Memories remain, mementoes left behind in family homestead

Aided by a young neighbour, Pomponi’s mother Settimia and two aunts — ages 83, 88 and 96 respectively — fled for their lives with only their nightclothes on when the quake hit at 3:36 a.m. Wednesday.

Pomponi and her husband were in Rome, where they live, but raced to Sant’Angelo to tend to the three elderly sisters who spend most of the year in Sant’Angelo, a hamlet of quake-devastated Amatrice. The three sisters go to Rome only in winter months, which can be harsh and snowy at Sant’Angelo’s 1,050 metres (3,400 feet) altitude.

With the sisters fine physically, albeit in shock, Pomponi and her husband turned their attention to retrieving the few things they needed from the home. Pomponi filled out a formal request at a makeshift help desk set up by firefighters at the edge of a grassy field down the road.

“We accompany them with the necessary precautions, without letting them walk under hazardous spots,” said the retrieval squad leader Rossano Riglioni. “We go in very quickly because there are still aftershocks. The houses are dangerous, and we retrieve just the essential material things based on what they ask us. We take those items and get out immediately.”

For Pomponi, that meant just the essentials for her mother and aunts, one of whom has heart problems while another suffers from Parkinson’s disease. As for family keepsakes like photos?

“Too risky because all the frames fell to the floor, and the glass shattered,” Pomponi said. “We preferred not to put them (the firefighters) at risk. And they told us it was too risky to get those things.”

Indeed, just an hour before the retrieval crew arrived, a powerful aftershock rattled the area. Pomponi’s husband, who is an architect, noted a few deep cracks running down the front of the villa that hadn’t been there in the first hours after the quake.

Ten residents of Sant’Angelo perished in the big quake. Year-round residents of the hamlet number in the dozens, but in summer, descendants of old-timers like Pomponi descend on Sant’Angelo for joyous family gatherings, returning to the place where generations were born. In the garden’s small vegetable patch, tomatoes and zucchini grow alongside a lone peach tree.

Pomponi said the family is part of the centuries-old Celli clan, which has noble roots originating in Tuscany. The family now has branches in the United States, and often the American relatives come to Sant’Angelo to see the town and family homestead.

Since Wednesday, a flood of emails has arrived from America.

“They want to know if we are alive and if the house is still here,” Pomponi said.

Frances D’Emilio, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Memories remain, mementoes left behind in family homestead

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