Rather than a handful of men working in close confines about 90m underground, at a site like Tower there are some of the largest earthmovers in the UK digging a hole 180m on the surface.
As the clean-up and recovery consumes what stock is in place for earthmovers, road graders and other heavy equipment for construction and infrastructure is put to work, the long lead-time required to build and deliver these machines may be a boon for companies like Caterpillar and its partners.
By April 7th, when most of its population had fled, L'Aquila was like a city that had been extensively shelled: a ghost town in which almost the only sounds were of house alarms, ambulance sirens and the earth-movers of rescue workers.