Italy seeks better ways to house people homeless from quake

Italy’s lobbying group for farmers, Coldiretti, said Monday that farm animals, most of them sheep and cows, also need warm shelters at night, since 90 percent of the stalls or barns have been damaged in the Amatrice area.

Italian architect Renzo Piano met Premier Matteo Renzi on Sunday. Speaking in an interview Sunday in Corriere della Sera newspaper, Piano proposed building temporary wooden homes near the three devastated towns in central Italy so that traumatized people could stay near their roots.

No housing decisions have been announced, and details of Renzi’s meeting with Piano weren’t immediately known.

The death toll Monday stood at 290. Authorities are using bulldozers with high crane-style arms to tear down some of the most dangerous building overhangs in Amatrice.