In reading about the tragic earthquakes in Italy I came across this sad revelation reported in Daily Beast, Fortune, and several other news outlets: The destruction of many of the buildings in central Italy may have been due to shoddy workmanship and fraud committed by mafia infiltrating reconstruction efforts and seismic protection contracts. Much of this reporting occurred after the August earthquake that destroyed most of the village of Amitrice.

What struck most people first was why the Romolo Capranica primary school in Amatrice had been destroyed. After all, the city paid more than €700,000 in 2013 to renovate the structure, including high-tech anti-seismic features that are supposed to be in place in any public building. But when investigators looked up the building code records, the seals and stamps that proved compliance were apparently faked and fudged. … The school fell because someone had cheated the system.

A prominent anti-Mafia prosecutor, Franci Roberti, is outraged at what he sees, and opened an investigation. He sees the handiwork of the Mob:

“I don’t want to rush to judgment, but if a building is built well, and if the anti-seismic standards have been met, a dramatic event such as we saw last week would damage or crack a building, but not cause it to pulverize or implode,” Roberti says.

Roberti is predicting that Italian mafia will try it again:

The post-earthquake reconstruction is historically a delicious morsel for criminal groups and complicit businesses.”

If this is all true, then the destructiveness of this natural disaster is being greatly magnified by a moral disaster. Of course, this kind of thing should not be terribly surprising, being evident everywhere and throughout history. Our failure to live up to our best ideals–our human nature’s propensity to cheat and steal and squander and live only for the short term gains–makes natural calamity much worse than it has to be. Our moral failure exacerbate such events.