An Italian politician wants Italian Americans to help him raise the funds to build a new village of Poggioreale, which was virtually destroyed by an earthquake a half-century ago. It’s now a ghost town after most of its residents left for good. The local school was half-destroyed, and a calendar on one of its walls is from 1968, the year of the quake.

Sicilians call it their modern Pompeii. Town Mayor Girolamo Cangelosi, is looking for donors, CNN reported. Some 5,000 families who had lived there have relocated to the US, with residents in New York, Texas, Massachusetts and Louisiana.