Repairing earthquake damage costs Italy over 3bn euros a year, says minister

Rome, Aug 22 (IANS/AKI) Italy spends more than 3 billion euros annually on rebuilding after earthquakes, Infrastructure Minister Graziano del Rio said on Tuesday, urging Italians make their homes and other buildings quake-proof.

"Italy is fragile and this owes to illegal building but also to its geological characteristics," Graziano Delrio told Italy's Rai1 public radio.

"We need our country to be seismically secure because we spend over 3 billion euros annually on repairing damage caused by earthquakes.

"So it's worth investing in prevention."

A total 10 million homes in Italy urgently needed to be made earthquake-proof and major tax breaks and grants were available to property owners for the necessary building work, Delrio said after a magnitude 4.0 earthquake killed at least two people, injured 39 and left 2,600 homeless on the seismically active resort island of Ischia off Naples late on Monday.

Illegal building on Ischia caused the deaths, injuries and destruction given the relatively moderate earthquake according to geologists, architects, environmental groups and prosecutors - claims that local mayors have denied.

The quake came almost a year to the day after a powerful 6.2-magnitude earthquake devastated several towns in central Italy. The quake on August 24, 2016 killed 297 people, left several thousand homeless and caused more than 23 billion euros of damage to dwellings and other buildings including medieval churches, as well as to agriculture.

The earthquake set off a months-long series of powerful aftershocks that depopulated towns and hamlets in the area and is believed to have triggered a deadly avalanche in the Abruzzo region in January that killed 29 people at a ski hotel.

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