Tremble everything!

“Run, run, we have to get out of here immediately!”

A moment later a deafening and overbearing noise overwhelmed us.

As I ran outside, convinced that my husband was following me, I heard people shouting out and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the houses crumble.

Instinctively I threw myself under a car and remained crouched. The earth was shaking. The earthquake had just happened. I felt my head spinning and my stomach upside down. I couldn’t move from fear.

“Mom, mom, where are you?” A little girl was crying and calling her mother. I saw her bare feet walking among the rubble.

“Baby, come here. Make yourself safe.” I told her in a faint voice.

Then there was another shock and immediately after a deathly silence.

A Richter 6.0 magnitude earthquake razed my city, Amatrice, affecting 140 other municipalities. Three hundred victims, 388 were injured and about 41,000 were displaced.

I am among the latter! At least I think, because the only thing I have realized is that I am a survivor, physically speaking.

Six years have passed since then and finally, the reconstruction works of my city have started. Maybe I’ll have a home again.

But yet, if I look around, it looks like it happened yesterday.

I wake up in the middle of the night, get out of the container and still look for my husband. Who knows he’s not lost… maybe to help that child find his mother.