58-year-old Enzo Rendina tells The Local he is "living a nightmare" following the August 2016 earthquake which destroyed his house. Since the disaster, he has refused to leave his town - a devotion to the land which led to his arrest earlier this week.
Pescara del Tronto is a small part of Arquata del Tronto, which after nearby Amatrice was the town worst hit by the 5.2 magnitude quake, home to 50 of the 299 casualties. Rendina remembers the moment of the earthquake as being "like a film".
"I was in the kitchen, half-asleep - then I heard the noise, the crashes, things falling like dominoes. In my house, two storey and the roof collapsed. "
He was able to escape from the crumbling house through the window and joined the other villagers standing outside, before moving on to other parts of the region to help with search and rescue efforts.
"I went to see who was missing. It was nighttime so there was only moonlight to see by. People were crying, the whole village was destroyed."
Rendina remembers pulling at least four people from the rubble himself, and when, seven hours after the first tremors, he heard a voice coming from deep in the ruins, he alerted rescuers and helped save a family of three.
The area was rocked again by a series of tremors in late October, and the remaining residents were evacuated. While most of those made homeless by the disaster moved to hotels and hostels, Rendina refused.
"I spent 70 days in the 'red zone' of the town. I'm angry with the local authorities, who have received billions of euros in funds but haven't made any progress [in the recovery efforts]," he says.
"I can't stay in a hotel, I can't sleep after seeing my house collapse and rescuing others from ruins - I simply can't sleep in a place made of bricks. The earthquake has changed my spirit, I no longer feel calm, I feel unwell. The authorities have never understood that, and just wanted me to leave."
For several months, the Marche native lived in tents provided at first by rescuers and later by the local Civil Protection Department. After extreme snowfall early this year made it too dangerous to carry on in a tent, he looked for help.
"I cleared the snow around the area and was able to contact the firefighters.
They had never left the area. They're exceptional people and were helping with problems caused by the snow, helping people retrieve belongings from their houses and to clear blocked-off roads."
The firefighters showed Rendina to their temporary operations center, which included a canteen and an office. Though they advised him once again to move to a hotel, he wanted to stay.
"I helped them around the area like a scout, saving them a lot of time and manpower because I knew where to go and what had to be done.
"But someone reported me to police. They said I was disturbing their work, bothering them, which wasn't true. I'd only taken up a very small bit of the office which was usually empty, sleeping on a chair or a blow-up mattress. I was helping, I didn't talk and made myself useful whenever anyone needed information."
"Then at 6 am one morning I was given the envelope," says Rendina, referring to the original cease-and-desist order. "The authorities are using me as a scapegoat - all the inefficiency is down to them, they have received lots of public money and not achieved much."
On Monday, police arrived and when Rendina again refused to go to a hotel, he was handcuffed and taken to the police station. "They put handcuffs on me, but I was most scared about my backpack. I had all the documents I’d got from the fallen house - photos, documents, sentimental objects - I had never left them in all this time, and I didn't want to lose them.
"I thought it would end there at a police station in Ascoli, that they would be reasonable, I was the victim, I saved other human beings, and put all my energy into helping. Then they put me in prison."
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