Italy: some villages may never recover from the earth quake.

PESCARA DEL TRONTO, Italy — Mostly there was silence, virtually the only sound being that of a river flowing peacefully down the mountain that swallowed this tiny hamlet when an earthquake struck early Wednesday .

On Thursday, some of the nearly 130 people who once lived here returned, accompanied by firefighters, to try to retrieve a few belongings and mementos of a life that was obliterated in a few violent seconds of shaking.
“Where was your bedroom?” a young fireman asked a couple from under his yellow helmet.
“It was where you see that white closet,” the woman answered, indicating a few shelves without doors hanging open, over the hill.

The sidewall of their two-story house collapsed down the slope, offering a glimpse of the intimacy of their lives.
Italian officials now say that at least 267 people were killed in the mountain towns along the fault that erupted. But for the smallest of those places, like this one, the damage will be tallied not only in terms of the lost lives of family, friends and neighbors, but quite possibly the elimination of the towns themselves.