The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi ... said the 17,000 people made homeless by Monday's earthquake should think of themselves as being on a "camping weekend". ... The quake, which devastated the city of L'Aquila and surrounding towns and villages, has now claimed 260 lives.
Berlusconi told the reporter for the N-TV channel that the homeless quake victims "lacked nothing". "They have medicaments. They have hot food. They have shelter for the night," he said. "Of course, their current lodgings are a bit temporary. But they should see it like a weekend of camping." ...
His remarks – which seem to have been intended to reassure the public – scarcely correspond to the experiences of the homeless. Between Monday and Tuesday, they had to endure a night of driving rain and hail during which temperatures fell to 4C ...
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
Bonus! The Red Cross is providing marshmellows.
There are far, far, far worse things in the world than having Stephen Harper as a prime minister.
Such as ....?
Meanwhile, the Vatican reports that the Pope will visit the disaster area after Easter Sunday or when the ground in L'Aquila stops shaking.
Update: The Italian press is reporting that questions are being raised about the materials and techniques used to build a recently constructed residential complex which collapsed, trapping and injuring dozens of people. A firefighter observed that it wasn't the earthquake that killed people but the buildings.
4 comments:
Silvio must have been channeling Barbara "This is working very well for them" Bush.
T'is truly amazing that those we select as political leaders lose touch with reality so quickly after begging for the job.
Must be something in the caviar.
(This is Dave from TGB. I'm not really anonymous, but I'm not on my own computer, so...)
Frank and Dave basically summed up my impressions. What a total out-of-touch ass.
I read a few articles that some scientists were monitoring the tremors leading up to the main event and were squelched from announcing their worst case predictions by authorities who didn't want to panic citizens.
One would hope that the owners of the construction companies that built the defective buildings were quaking for fear of legal retribution but with Berlusconi as leader, any investigation into corruption will go nowhere.
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