L'AQUILA, Italy -- By seismic standards, the 25-second tremor on April 6 that rattled this medieval city and surrounding villages in central Italy's Abruzzo region was fairly moderate. The destruction was not.

Tens of thousands of buildings collapsed, killing hundreds and leaving more than 50,000 homeless; firefighters and other emergency workers who sprang to action in the pre-dawn darkness found entire blocks flattened.

But the scariest thing, Miocchi Duilio said recently, was the boato, or angry noise that preceded the 6.3-magnitude quake.

It's been seven months since the terremoto, Italy's deadliest in almost three decades. Yet the 78-year-old native trembled as if it had happened yesterday.

Like so many in the regional capital of 73,000, Mr. Duilio was sleeping in his mid-rise apartment at 3:32 that morning when a dull roar started building from deep inside the earth -- a sound so threatening he sprang instantly awake.

"Bestiale che sembra dire, 'Vi voglio ammazzare tutti,' " he exclaimed, waving his hands for emphasis. "It seemed to say, 'I will kill you all.' "

The building shook violently from left to right. Then, up and down. Finally, it spun around like a giant, crazy whirlpool.

Mr. Duilio and his family survived the battering jolt. A neighbor did not, despite their frantic efforts to dig her out of the rocks with their hands.

"My daughter kept screaming, 'We have to get her out.' But the firemen who came with dogs said they could only save the ones who were still alive."

Mr. Duilio's story is one of thousands in a region that's still reeling, still healing. It's a common tale that speaks to the fear, anger, frustration and heartbreak so many still feel deeply -- and not just in Italy.

Josephine Coletti, of Ben Avon, who was born in the tiny hamlet of Opi in Fagnano Alto, a collection of 10 villages 11 miles from the quake's epicenter, was so desperate to reach out after the temblor that within a month she was raising funds with homemade pasta sauces. She's raised more than $26,000 for Fagnano Alto and presented a check to Mayor Mauro Fattore during a monthlong visit there in September.

In other local efforts,the American Italian Cultural Institute of Pittsburgh raised money for living expenses for two young men from L'Aquila attending Robert Morris University on scholarship this fall. And last Sunday, the Italian consulate and several other organizations including UPMC, The University of Pittsburgh and Italian Radio and TV, held a benefit dinner at the Alpine Club in Bridgeville for displaced students attending the University of Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh Filmmakers.

According to Carla Lucente, Pittsburgh's honorary Italian consul, a half-million Western Pennsylvanians are either Italian born or Italian-American. Many of those living in Pittsburgh's "Little Italy" neighborhood of Bloomfield -- home to the country's second-largest Columbus Day parade -- trace their roots to mountainous Abruzzo.

But with coverage no longer splashed across American front pages, many are unaware of the extent of the quake's devastation or the emotional toll of the event survivors have likened to our country's Hurricane Katrina.

Mrs. Coletti returns to Opi every year for a few weeks to visit family and friends, and do upkeep on the home her great-grandfather built in the late 1800s. This September, the trip took on added importance, as she was anxious to determine the extent of the damage on her house, and to see how her relatives were coping.

Almost 60 municipalities sustained damage in the quake, which killed more than 300 people and injured thousands. The tiny village of Onna on the city's outskirts lost 41 of its 300 residents. But in a way, the region was lucky, Mrs. Coletti noted, while negotiating her way through L'Aquila's maze of blocked-off streets in her tiny rental car. Had the terremoto occurred during the day instead of in the middle of the night on a holiday weekend, hundreds more likely would have died.

Moreover, the four-star Hotel Duca degli Abruzzi was closed for renovations. Countless others were saved when two moderate tremors before the main quake sent people scurrying out of their homes to sleep in their cars.

After the second shake at about 1 a.m., Paula Mastropietro, who owns a small jewelry store on Via Urbani, was so scared that she drove with her children to her parents' house outside the city limits. They were parked for just a few minutes when the car started shaking up and down. They survived. Her 73-year-old mother, who was sleeping on the couch in the living room, died in June from complications after suffering a broken hip during the quake. Her store is among the few that have reopened.

Many of the homeless moved in with family, rented apartments or were put up in hotels on the Adriatic coast. Another 39,000 people found refuge in 161 tendopoli, large tent cities erected within two days of the disaster by the Italian Department of Civil Protection, which is similar to the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the United States.

Much of the earthquake's debris now has been cleared. Emergency workers and volunteers from all across Italy mobilized within minutes, and continue working. But there's still a long way to go.

Before April 6, the historic center of this walled city on the left bank of the Aterno River bustled with thousands of tourists, government workers and students. Now, it's a ghost town of broken facades, sagging rooftops, twisted metal and a shattered cultural history.

How do you replace something like the apse of Basilica di Santa Maria di Collemaggio, where Pope Celestine V was crowned in 1294? It collapsed, along with almost the entire dome of the church of Anime Santa in the city's Piazza Duomo, which dates to the early 1700s.

Other than soldiers patrolling the city's dusty perimeters, the only sign of life amid the scaffolding and construction is the occasional firefighter escorting residents in hard hats to their homes to retrieve possessions. It's eerily still, as if the city itself is in mourning. The only sounds are the hum of generators and occasional clunk of metal being tossed into a dumpster.

Thirteen miles to the east, Mayor Fattore's office in the village of Vallecupa sits amid similar devastation. Orange mesh fences block off houses with caved-in roofs or massive piles of stone and crumbled plaster. One of the most shocking sights is its centuries-old church, where visitors can look through the front door, past broken medieval frescoes, straight into the azure sky.

Almost half of Fagnano Alto's 1,000 homes were declared non agibile, or uninhabitable, Mr. Fattore said. Current plans call for the construction of 58 new houses on 11 sites scattered among the villages. Foundations already dot the countryside.

Money for repairs from the federal government has been trickling in. But because so many of the structures damaged are historic, and officials have yet to pass an ordinance with guidelines for making repairs in historic districts, progress has been slow. It's also unclear whether the government will pay for repairs to things such as works of art or local parishes that are not essential but important to locals' way of life.

That's why Mrs. Coletti's fundraising efforts are helping to pay for one-third of a wooden church officials hope to finish constructing by year's end to give Fagnanesi a proper place to worship.

In Opi, the stone church that's been there for more than 200 years has been declared off limits due to cracks in an even older foundation that dates to Roman times, so people have been celebrating Saturday Mass in Elsa Rosa's living room.

"We're so thankful, because it will help us continue our traditions," Mr. Fattore said about Mrs. Coletti's contribution.

To raise the additional $15,000 needed to complete the $110,000 church project, Mrs. Coletti is planning another fundraiser -- a regional cookbook or dinner, perhaps, or the auction of a painting by her cousin, Adele Giuliana De Matteis, a well-known artist in Alba Adriatica on the Abruzzo coast whose abstract works in October were exhibited in New York City.

The physical reconstruction, though, is a part of the challenge. Only now have people begun to accept the reality of the disaster, said Mr. Fattore. Many, especially the elderly, also worry they won't be in secure housing by winter. As of last week, 859 people were still sleeping in 603 tents in 23 tendopoli in and near L'Aquila.

"Our hardest work has been to reassure people they'll be protected when the bad weather comes," he said.

The peace of mind the canvas structures initially provided -- sleeping outside seemed less dangerous than sleeping under a roof -- soon wore off, and many of Mrs. Coletti's friends and relatives quickly found their way back home. Even if it meant sleeping, as her friend Adriana Capaldi did for weeks on end, in their garages or in small huts constructed in their back yards.

Abandoning their tiny village wasn't an option because leaving felt like a betrayal.

"They're like bugs in amber," Mrs. Coletti's daughter, Julie, said. "So afraid of change."

Some, in fact, have refused to leave the tendopoli even though they've been offered suitable apartments because they don't want to live in a different part of Abruzzo or enroll their children in unfamiliar schools. They'd rather wait it out until their homes are repaired or a new wooden house in their village is ready.

When Mrs. Coletti arrived in Opi in September, she settled into the century-old stone house in which she was raised. Like many of her neighbors' homes, it was rated an "E" on a scale of "A" to "F," with "F" being deemed uninhabitable by the government because of structural damage. But she simply ignored the huge cracks in her bedroom's barrel ceiling along with her jangled nerves. Minor tremors continue to shake the earth every day; on Friday, a 2.6-magnitude aftershock in Vallecupa caused schools to evacuate.

"The life in their eyes is gone," said Mrs. Coletti of her neighbors. "It's finally sinking in that their lives will never again be the same."

Perhaps as a way of coping, many feel the need to tell their earthquake stories, over and over.

At the china store Regalcasa in the northern suburbs of L'Aquila, proprietor Paolo Placidi -- unprompted -- recounted how he rushed from his home in Poggio Picerze to the historic center, where he helped pull bodies out of the rubble. The image that haunts him, he said with teary eyes, was of a baby who was found alive underneath her dead parents.

It will take years to repair and rebuild the communities destroyed by the quake; experts say the city center, which includes the university premises, could be closed for up to five years. But Italy's Civil Protection Department has pledged to get everyone into rented or permanent homes before winter's cold weather sets in -- the original goal was Sept. 30. Some already have been placed in state-of-the-art, quake-proof residences on the outskirts of L'Aquila funded by the government.

Comprehensive disaster insurance is not available in Italy, so most of the cost of reconstruction will be absorbed by the national budget. Foundations for many more pre-fab wooden homes are also in place.

But even in those whose future is less certain, you can sense a resiliency and determination not to surrender to heartache. Etched into the transom above the door of Mr. Placidi's china store is the number 3:33, signifying one minute after the earthquake, followed by the words "e noi continuiamo insieme." Translation: We will continue together.

As Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce wrote after a 1915 earthquake in Pescina:

"When there is a need not only for an agile intelligence and a versatile spirit, but also an iron will and persistence and endurance, I told myself aloud: you are Abruzzese!"

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