Quake Exposes Italy’s Challenge to Retrofit Its Architecture

Romano Camassi, a seismologist, picked up a sand-colored speck as he surveyed the damage from this week’s earthquake on the green mountain crest where the village of Casetta, now ruins, once perched.

“This is just ground, soil,” he said, sadly. “In so many buildings in this area, that was the material used to keep together the irregular stones found in the surroundings which people used to build their homes.”  Read more.