Italy's quake, predicted?

Mena

Source

Irish Times Online wrote:

Italy muzzled scientist who predicted quake

An Italian scientist predicted a major earthquake around L'Aquila weeks before disaster struck the city today, killing more than 90 people, but was reported to authorities for spreading panic.

The government today insisted the warning, by seismologist Giacchino Giuliani, had no scientific foundation.
The first tremors in the region were felt in mid-January and continued at regular intervals, creating mounting alarm in the medieval city, about 100km east of Rome.

Vans with loudspeakers drove around the town a month ago telling locals to evacuate their houses after Giuliani, from the National Institute of Astrophysics, predicted a large quake was on the way, prompting the mayor's anger.

Mr Giuliani, who based his forecast on concentrations of radon gas around seismically active areas, was reported to police for "spreading alarm" and was forced to remove his findings from the Internet.

As media asked questions about the whether the government properly safeguarded the population in light of his warning, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi appeared on the defensive at a news conference.
He said now was the time to concentrate on relief efforts and "we can discuss afterwards about the predictability of earthquakes".

Italy's Civil Protection agency held a meeting of the Major Risks Committee, grouping scientists charged with assessing such risks, in L'Aquila on March 31st to reassure the townspeople.

"The tremors being felt by the population are part of a typical sequence ... (which is) absolutely normal in a seismic area like the one around L'Aquila," the civil protection agency said in a statement on the eve of that meeting.
It added that the agency saw no reason for alarm but was nonetheless effecting "continuous monitoring and attention".

The head of the agency, Guido Bertolaso, referred back to that meeting at today's joint news conference with Berlusconi.

The Major Risks Committee concluded there was no reason to forecast a more powerful earthquake than the previous tremors, he said. "There is no possibility of predicting an earthquake, that is the view of the international scientific community."

Enzo Boschi, the head of the National Geophysics Institute, said the real problem for Italy was a long-standing failure to take proper precautions despite a history of tragic quakes.

"We have earthquakes but then we forget and do nothing. It's not in our culture to take precautions or build in an appropriate way in areas where there could be strong earthquakes," he said.

I can't find a Geology forum so I'm popping this here. Is measuring concentrations of radon gas around seismically active areas a valid method of, and I use the term loosely, "predicting" earthquakes? I'm not worried about the "muzzling the scientist" bit at the moment, it may be better served in the Conspiricies forum posted by someone else.

I always thought it was nigh on impossible to predict these things, so this surprised me, hence I would like an informed opinion from someone in the business...

Capt'n Midnight

if granite was broken or cracked then I'd guess radon would be released then again there were quakes since Jan so not totally unexpected

do the chinese still claim success for watching animal behaviour ?


Oh there are a lot of ads for psychics premium rate lines on Italian TV and matching dreams to numbers for the lottery is more common than here.

taram

Radon emission is mostly accepted as one of the precursor events than can predicate a quake, since the gas is inert until something forces it out, usually cracks and deformation.

But it always comes down to the same problem with all the other methods of earthquake prediction: you can say there'll be an large earthquake next week in Town X because all your equipment says it, but it can end up being 4 months down the road and actually be in Town Y next door. It's still too hit and miss, and while I don't like the fact the guy was stifled, the government were right. It's happened in California and China where a university has gone 'wah evacuate' then thousands of dollars later there isn't a peep out of the earth. While ideally any sort of warning should be heeded, the exact same thing could have happened even if people were evacuated weeks before, because weeks later, they'd say 'hey nothing happened, let's go home' and maybe next time when it was more obvious they'd ignore it as another false alarm. All you can do is build safe buildings, have evacuation plans in place and keep researching.

There was a good episode of Horizon on BBC on predicting natural disasters a few weeks ago actually.

clonmel

taram wrote: »

All you can do is build safe buildings, have evacuation plans in place and keep researching.
.

Exactly, what happened to the city of L'Aquila is a shame for my country.
Of course old churches and building from the XIII entury are supposed to collapse in case of earthquake, and you can't avoid it.
But people living in modern buildings are supposed to be safe in this case, and about those living in the old ones,the government should advise them about the risks.

Anyway, according to Italian newspaper that guy predicted a great quake in the city of Sulmona, 30-40 km far from l'Aquila city.
That town was nearly untouched by this quake.
So I can't totally blamed who sued him.