Soon after I published the previous post about project timing, Marche got hit hard, first by a major snowstorm and them by a series of fairly strong earthquakes.
Snow fell over a number of days in mid-January, piling up as high as two meters (6.5 ft) in some villages. (Kevin said there was less in our area, but over 4 feet.)
Then, on January 18, there was a series of four earthquakes in the magnitude range 4.1 – 5.7. These quakes follow the even stronger quakes of last October and August. (There have been more than 45,000 aftershocks since August.)
The biggest catastrophe was in the region just south of Marche, Abruzzo, also hit hard by snow, where the Hotel Rigopiano was buried by an avalanche set off by the quakes and 29 of the 40 people inside died.
The impact on our project is only on timing. Very little work has been or will be able to be completed in January. Kevin reports that the contractor, Francisc, has been able to do some work in his shop, assembling some of the steel needed for the support columns.
An Update
I showed a list of Marche earthquakes of magnitude over 5.0 in my post about the October quakes.
Here’s an update to that list:
| Month/Year | Magnitude |
|---|---|
| Oct 2016 | 6.6 |
| Aug 2016 | 6.2 |
| Oct 2016 | 6.1 |
| Sep 1997 | 6.1 |
| Oct 1930 | 5.9 |
| Jan 2017 | 5.7 |
| Jan 2017 | 5.6 |
| Oct 2016 | 5.5 |
| Oct 1943 | 5.5 |
| Oct 1936 | 5.5 |
| May 1987 | 5.1 |
So the top 3 and 6 of the top 8 have been in the last six months.
Sources:
First image: | http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/18/italy-hit-four-powerful-earthquakes-four-hours-bringing-terror/
Second image: By TVSEI - CC BY 3.0 | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6La91fbpbbg
Map icons: Maps Icons Collection | https://mapicons.mapsmarker.com
The caves weren’t discovered until 1971, when some spelunkers from a Marche caving club felt a strong breeze coming from a small hole in the ground. They had to enlarge the opening to get in, where they saw … a very small room, but with some small gaps where the wind was whistling through. After some days of digging, they finally were in a place they could stand and they saw … darkness. But big darkness. They dropped some stones off an edge they (fortunately) did see and estimated the fall at 100m (330ft). Watch your step! They called this cave “La Grotta Grande del Vento,” the Big Cave of the Wind.
I think there are three reasons it’s hard to find this feature. First, in virtually all of the older, restored farmhouses, which were made of stone, there were interior load-bearing stone walls. If those were to be removed, steel beams needed to be inserted, which would have been fairly expensive. Second, the structural restorations were done a number years ago, when open floor plans weren’t as common, especially outside of the US. Third, many were redone with the idea of renting part of the house to tourists in the summer. That meant dividing the house into apartments and having multiple kitchens.
Note that I’m saying it might be agents, plural, not just agent, singular. The same property can be listed by multiple agents. It all depends on the seller, and it’s generally in the seller’s interest to have multiple agents on the job. (Twice, on my original trip, I was taken to see a house that, when arriving, I realized I’d seen with another agent. The descriptions and pictures were different, so I thought it was just two houses in the same general area.)