At 3:32 A.M., in bed in Rome, I am awakened by the unmistakable shaking of an earthquake. I hear neighbors unchaining their doors and running downstairs. A few hours later I am in L’Aquila, a historic town in the Abruzzo region of central Italy, standing in front of a rubble pile that used to be a five-story apartment building. Some residents of L’Aquila and the surrounding towns did not have time to move from their beds before they were crushed by concrete. The residents who avoided this fate, still in their pajamas, stare at men covered in dust on top of the rubble. The men quietly pass red plastic buckets back and forth, filling the containers with piece after piece of the broken concrete. No machinery can be used yet; they have heard voices and hope there are more survivors under there. The contents of a home office — piles of paper, color folders, and overturned drawers — have been thrown to the bottom of the pile. A blue bedspread flaps out from the side of the rubble; a little white oven sits alone at the top. A German shepherd police dog sniffs around the debris. A police officer comes over with a recovered jewelry box in hand, but none of the families on the curb claim it. A suitcase comes out of the rubble, and a stuffed animal with floppy ears, but these are not what the families want. Finally, on top of the rubble, there is a shake of the head from one of the men that works its way down to the families on the curb. It is for the girl I have been standing next to, in her 20s with black-rimmed glasses, who as the shock of death hits her screams for her lost sister. A photographer comes up and snaps a shot of her. Other cameras have been filming her from afar. She grabs a water bottle and throws it at the photographer, yelling expletives. I sympathize with her anger. I move up the street in what is now a hot midday sun, nine hours after the quake, and watch three firefighters on a fire-truck ladder climb toward a second-story window of what could be a small 18th-century house. The walls are still standing, but the building is cracked and they must move carefully. Again family members are standing outside in silence, watching the scene unfold. A stretcher comes out slowly, the body already wrapped in a white sheet. A second firefighter emerges from the window holding a blue dress on a hanger, the plastic covering from the dry cleaners still on. He has thought to bring something from the lady’s closet to bury her in. There are 272 more stories like these. As night falls on the first day, we journalists look for a place to close our eyes for a few hours. It is 2 A.M., almost 24 hours after the quake, and it has gotten cold in this town, now abandoned, near the Apennine Mountains. We do not hope for food; everything is closed. We squat down behind trucks to go to the bathroom, looking up in case something should fall on us. One hotel is open in the town, and the owner, seeing an opportunity, is charging 240 euros for a room that normally costs 80. He smiles as we come to his front desk, reassuring us his hotel has withstood every earthquake. The room I enter is cracked at the ceiling; white shards of wall cover the floor, the plastic shower is filled with bits of rubble from the ceiling. I’ve seen far worse places in my travels, and I lie down on the bed. Not ten minutes later, an aftershock hits. I have visions of ending up under the rubble. I remember a mantra at CNN — your own safety first — and I say to myself that if another one comes, I will do something. A CNN producer and our Italian driver are in adjoining rooms trying to sleep, and though I doubt they are successful, I don’t want to wake them. The second aftershock comes a few minutes later and I go down to the lobby. The three hotel clerks are sitting around, and they tell me it’s always worse after 2 A.M., but the hotel is safe. Just then a third one shakes the building, and the three tough guys bolt from the lobby and run outside in a panic. I go up and get the rest of our team and tell them we are leaving. We take pillows and blankets (for our 240 euros) and get in the car, heading back to the scene in the center. I am met by a fresh-faced TV star who just flew in from abroad. “It’s an earthquake story, easy,” she says with disdain, “I already wrote it before I got here.” I am shocked by her callousness. “I’m going to talk to people,” she says brightly as she trots off in high heels. I watch as she approaches exhausted Italians huddled in brown blankets in the dark of night. They refuse to speak to her. We are a reviled bunch, we journalists, and never more so than when we must impose ourselves on a scene of great sadness. Yet any reader knows that the personal details count; we want to know who these people were, how they lived and how they died. And if we can see a picture of a grieving girl, we feel all the more deeply the sadness of the story. L’Aquila is not just another earthquake story. It is the story of 272 people, like you and me, who died in the middle of the night. In some cases they may have died because of negligent construction: Some apartments were not built to standard, even after the ’60s, though this is a known earthquake zone. Journalists will tell that story too, in time. For now, all around Italy, and with a mass funeral planned for Good Friday by the Vatican secretary of state, the story is first and foremost about the people of L’Aquila who will not celebrate Easter brunch with all the members of their families around them. It is the story of regular lives, changed forever by death. And that is the hardest story to tell. – Delia Gallagher is a Vatican journalist based in Rome. She is the former CNN faith and values correspondent.