"Twelve billion euros is the amount we will have to find to rebuild the Abruzzo region," around l'Aquila, the epicentre of the deadly quake that killed nearly 300 people, Roberto Maroni told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

Governmnet ministers are due to hold a cabinet meeting in the medieval city next week to release funds to help the population and begin reconstruction, said the paper. The meeting would be held on April 23 or 24, it reported.

The force of the quake left one in every three homes in the affected zones: in l'Aquila itself, one in two home was affected.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said last week that several heads of state and government had offered to "adopt" a church or monument to finance their reconstruction.

On Tuesday the regional chief Gianni Chiodi said Italian authorities aimed to rehouse everyone who had lost their homes before the onset of winter.

Nearly 58,000 people were left homeless by the quake. Around 34,000 are currently sheltering in tent camps, with the rest being put up in hotels or by relatives and friends, say the civil protection authorities.

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Miami FL (SPX) Apr 20, 2009
Today, humans perform visual inspections every two years of most of the nation's older bridges. But with a scarcity of inspectors and tens of thousands of bridges, that process can be long and laborious.