Two months after an earthquake devastated L'Aquila in central Italy, resentment is beginning to boil over for the some 58,000 refugees from the disaster as reconstruction work stalls.
Some 600 people, many wearing hard hats or bicycle helmets, crossed police lines to march into L'Aquila at the weekend under the slogan Let's Take Back Our City, which remains an inaccessible "red zone" too dangerous for habitation. The protest defied a ban on demonstrations or assembly among the residents of the 180 tent camps dotted around the area.
The directive from civil protection authorities even banned coffee, cola and alcohol as "potentially stimulating substances", press reports said.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi pledged after the demo to empty the tent camps by September 15, either by securing and certifying people's abandoned homes or by re-housing them. "So far we've heard a lot of nice words, promises," said Giusti Contino, a 70-year-old retired cook having lunch at a tent camp while teenagers played indoor football in one corner and a TV blared in another. "They've promised roses," he snarled.L'Aquila remains a picture of devastation - piles of rubble every few hundred metres, imploded buildings, half-crumbled churches - and aftershocks are a near-constant reminder of the quake.
"Discontent is spreading in the unlivable tent camps and the overcrowded hotels (housing earthquake evacuees) on the (Adriatic) coast," read an editorial in the local Il Centro daily. "Sooner or later there's the risk that it will explode uncontrollably," it warned.
"There's a lot of bitterness," said a logistics officer for L'Aquila's fire service, who didn't want to be named.
He said it was unlikely that any L'Aquila residents would be able to return home even by next spring, a year after the disaster that claimed 295 lives. "Almost all of L'Aquila is closed," he said. "It's a red zone because it's dangerous. Lots of houses are intact, but the streets leading to them are dangerous," he explained.
In addition, he said: "Many buildings look intact from the outside but inside they are completely gutted."
A shop window in a clothing store in central L'Aquila presented a macabre scene of mannequins left exactly where they fell, legs splayed and wigs detached, when the quake struck at 3.30 am on April 6.