Earthquake / Location of the event: Lat. 43,019 - Lon. 12,879
Region: Italy_Umbria-Marche Apennines
Date-Time: 1997-09-26 - 11:40 am
Intensity: 6,05 Mw
Description of moveable works of art / Type: Archival items – Sellano library
Author: Various
Title: Various
Size:
Quantity: 4000 items from the 13th to the 20th century
Support: Paper
Location: Sellano Archives in the former elementary school
Brief damage description / The major problems after the October 14 earthquake were the condemned buildings and the aftershocks; therefore it was of paramount importance to transfer the books to a safer location.
The school was so heavily damaged that it was impossible to enter and check the state of the books.
After the February 3 inspection the books were found in good condition except for the Mutual Society collection heavily damaged by water.
Description of the protection procedures after the earthquake / First intervention: a few days after the first tremor part of the historical archives was transferred to the church of S. Francesco first and then to the former church of S. Caterina. The archive content in the elementary school could not be moved due to the condemned building.
Transfer: transfer of archives from the former elementary school took 3 days. Operations were quite difficult since the bookcases and part of the walls had collapsed. Both inspection and transfer operations were carried out by the fire brigade, volunteers from the Protezione Civile, operators from the Territorial Association, the Municipality, the State Archive and the Spraintendenza.
All items are currently stored in the State Archive in Spoleto.
Details
Salvaged items:
· Documents from the Municipalità of Sellano
· Documents from the former Municipalità of Montesanto and from the castles of Apagni, Postignano, Cammoro and Orsano (part of the Spoleto area since the unification of Italy).
· Archivi of the Congregazione della Carità
· Collection of documents of the Mutual Society
· NOPs documents of the 1960s and 1970s
· Political documents of the period after the unification of Italy
Overall evaluation on the
Protection procedures
(insufficient, sufficient, good, very good) / Good. Both preliminary inspections and rescue operations despite not being immediate due to the aftershocks and the unsafe conditions of the buildings.
Description of the present state
(Damages, return to original location etc.) / The archive and the documents are now in the new Town Hall building in Sellano.
Bibliografy / F. Ciacci et al., "La scrittura da salvare: Conservazione, salvaguardia e valorizzazione del patrimonio archivistico e librario nei comuni colpiti dal sisma: dall'emergenza alla programmazione", Atti dell'incontro di lavoro a Foligno 1 aprile 1998, Quaderni della Soprintendenza, Perugia, 1999
Project co-funded by DG ECHO
Grant Agreement No.070401/2009/540426/SUB/A4