Word: melfi
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...chief problem lay in trying to persuade inhabitants to return to their homesites. Not only the fresh and fearful recollection of over 2,000 killed and twice as many injured, but the fact that the torn earth still quivered ominously from time to time made the villagers of Melfi, Puglia, Avellino, Ariano skeptical about going home prematurely...
Centre of the disturbance and scene of the greatest loss of life were the mountain villages of Avellino, Villanova-Albanese, Melfi, in the Apennines back of Naples. Here thousands were mangled, buried alive in the debris of stone houses that crumpled and knocked each other down like rows of toy soldiers. Though Bari on the Adriatic was shaken by severe tremors and many houses damaged, none was killed, none injured. Fascist engineers were proud, for modern Bari is their handiwork. They have converted a small sleepy fishing village into a great modern port (rival of Brindisi), laid out broad avenues...
...heartrending tour. In Melfi, soldiers and workmen had been working like mad trying to extricate pretty 20-year-old Giuseppina Bocheppi, pinned under a building, starving but still alive, moaning for help. Just as the royal car entered the village another wall collapsed, killed Giuseppina and one of her rescuers. King Vittorio Emanuele, who had stood helplessly wringing his hands before a similar scene in another village an hour before, burst into tears...