Dozens die in Italian earthquake

[Bounty]

At least 40 people have been killed in a powerful earthquake that struck central Italy, Italian officials say.

Five children are said to be among the dead and many remain unaccounted for as a massive search for the trapped is under way.

The 6.3-magnitude quake struck at 0330 (0130 GMT) close to L'Aquila city, 95km (60 miles) north-east of Rome.

A civil protection official said 3,000 to 10,000 buildings in the medieval city may have been damaged.

"This means that we'll have several thousand people to assist over the next few weeks and months," Agostino Miozzo told Sky Italia.

"Our goal is to give shelter to all by tonight."

State of emergency

Earlier, the mayor of L'Aquila, Massimo Cialente, said some 100,000 people had left their homes.

A university dormitory, churches and a bell tower are believed to be among the buildings that had collapsed.

Residents and rescuers were using their bare hands to clear the debris from collapsed buildings. There were calls for quiet as they listened for signs of life amid the rubble.

Survivors, some still in their night clothes, hugged each other as they waited for news of friends and relatives.

Hundreds waited for treatment at the city's main hospital, where doctors were forced to treat people in the open air because only one operating room was functioning, Italian news agency Ansa reports.

The death toll has been rising steadily throughout the morning. The latest from Italian media is that 40 people are now dead.

But with many villages in the surrounding area still cut off by landslides, it is thought the full scale of the disaster will not become clear for many hours.

Phone and power lines remain down, and some bridges and roads have been closed as a precaution as the region was hit by a series of aftershocks.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has declared a state of emergency, and is reported to have cancelled a visit to Moscow to travel to the quake-hit area.

Panic

The earthquake happened hours after a 4.6-magnitude tremor shook the area but caused no reported damage.

Thousands of the city's 70,000 residents ran into the streets in panic during the 30 second tremor.

"We left as soon as we felt the first tremors," said Antonio D'Ostilio, 22, as he stood on a street in L'Aquila with a suitcase of clothes hastily piled together.

"We woke up all of a sudden and we immediately ran downstairs in our pyjamas," he was quoted by the Associated Press as saying.

A student dormitory was said to be one of the buildings badly damaged. Rescuers were reportedly searching the rubble for people feared trapped inside.

One student told Rai state TV that he managed to escape the building before the roof collapsed.

Public safety chief Guido Bertolaso warned of "numerous victims, many injured and so many collapsed homes" as he travelled to the scene, Ansa news agency reported.

Correspondents say that L'Aquila, capital of the mountainous Abruzzo region, has many old buildings not built to withstand a strong earthquake.

Even some modern structures on the outskirts of the city were reported to have collapsed.

The earthquake was also felt in Rome, where the BBC correspondent said he was woken up by the shaking.

Italy lies on two fault lines and has been hit by powerful earthquakes in the past, mainly in the south of the country.

It's the worst disaster to hit Italy this decade and I expect the death toll to climb for the next few days - it's doubled since this morning, and many are still trapped.

Wanna bet Berlusconi finds a way to pin this on the Roma?

[Tiriol]

The current information to be found at Helsingin Sanomat's website (link in Finnish, sorry) says that over 90 people have died. While I was returning from school I heard from radio that over 50.000 people have been made temporarily homeless and entire towns may have been just about completely demolished by the earthquake. Apparently the entire Italian traffic is in disarray and the government urges people not to use private transports.

[Edi]

That death toll is going to go drastically up if the HS article gives a correct inkling of the amount of damage. And if a lot of the buildings were cocnrete element buildings, which is likely, it will be really bad. Because many of them are likely built with only lip service (if that) paid to building codes and quality of the elements may have been anything, given how much of the Italian construction industry is under the influence of organized crime that seeks profit first and damn safety and regulations.

[Bounty]

BBC article updated: 90 dead, 1500+ wounded, 40k homeless.

Here in the centre of the city, building after building has been left destroyed or half standing with cracks and holes.

We watched as rescue workers struggled to pull out survivors, crawling on their stomachs to try to reach those trapped inside.

There is a stream of almost ghostly figures, local people caught up in the early hours this morning in this earthquake, who are pouring past us wearing blankets.

They are pulling suitcases and luggage past this collapsed building trying to get to safety. People are wandering around in a dazed state.

It looks like a warzone.

[Darth Wong]

That death toll is going to go drastically up if the HS article gives a correct inkling of the amount of damage. And if a lot of the buildings were cocnrete element buildings, which is likely, it will be really bad. Because many of them are likely built with only lip service (if that) paid to building codes and quality of the elements may have been anything, given how much of the Italian construction industry is under the influence of organized crime that seeks profit first and damn safety and regulations.

That's really true, and not just a stereotype?

[Garibaldi]

That's really true, and not just a stereotype?

The construction industry all over the world is a tempting investment for organized crime, for the same reasons the garbage industry is. Raw materials are relatively cheap, you can cut corners without anyone immediately noticing, you can bribe local officials fairly easily, and whatever you don't use you can steal.

Here's an interesting article on organized crime and the garbage-hauling business, a lot of which also applies to construction. With regards to Italy, it notes that the Mafia may control 1/5 of the country's businesses (!!).

[Edi]

Unfortunately it is more true than not, Mike. I don't know about the specifics of the Abruzzo province, but there is guaranteed to be a mafia presence in construction there. The mafia controls most of Italian cement production and a lot of other stuff.

You should read the book Gomorra by Roberto Saviano to get an idea just how pervasive it can be. In the Napoli region it's all under mafia control. In Sicily where I went for a holiday last summer, there are new towns and old towns. Whenever Etna has a larger eruption and there is a non-trivial earthquake, there are two kinds of results:

The old towns suffer damage, cracked building walls, some broken roofs and so on.

The new towns are flattened because they have been constructed from shoddy materials by mafia controlled construction companies that are looking for maximum profit and don't give a shit about the people. You can recognize the newer ones by sight because they also look ugly as fuck compared to the old, traditional places, for much the same reasons they are shoddy.

I don't want to see the day when they have a catastrophe like the Messina earthquake in the beginning of the 20th century. That killed tens of thousands of people and literally leveled cities to the ground. In Messina, not one building was left standing. And if Vesuvius decides to have a major eruption like the one in 80 AD that destroyed Pompeii, it's going to kill hundreds of thousands of people, if not several million. Southern Italy is sitting on a right bloody powder keg.

Abruzzo is north of Rome, so it's not in the worst place, and this was not a huge quake, but given the way Italy is, it's bad enough.

[Edi]

Death toll is up to 150. And they're digging the ruins by hand in many places because there is not enough equipment and no way to get it to many places. The numbers will be ugly by the end of the week.

[FSTargetDrone]

Check out the bolded/enlarged text roughly in the middle of the story below:

As many as 150 feared dead in Italian quake, rescue official says

'It's the worst tragedy since the start of the millennium,' says official

Last Updated: Monday, April 6, 2009 | 12:09 PM ET

The death toll in Monday's devastating earthquake in central Italy could be as high as 150, an official with Italy's Civil Protection Agency told the CBC in an interview.

"We are having some 100 to 150 dead, and we have a great number of wounded and a huge number — many tens of thousands of homeless, people who cannot go back in their homes,"said Agostino Miozzo, of the agency that is spearheading rescue efforts.

"We have a huge number of teams coming from all over the country with dogs, with fire brigade people … We are still finding people, wounded people, especially in the small villages far from L'Aquila."

More than 1,500 people have been injured, according to reports.
Rain, nightfall complicate rescue

Rain was complicating rescue efforts, but they would continue overnight by using generators, Miozzo said.

Because of the risk of more quakes in the region, and no one would be allowed to remain in damaged homes, he added.

More than 15,000 buildings have been declared off limits. A university dormitory and a hotel were among the thousandsof buildings destroyed.

The medieval city of L'Aquila was hardest hit by the pre-dawn quake that rocked the Apennine mountains.

The quake struck about 110 kilometers northeast of Rome at 3:32a.m.
Canadian family escapes

Meanwhile, a Canadian family that survived the earthquake feel lucky to be alive.

Tony Rambaldini, of Montreal — who has owned and operated the Canadian Hotel in L"Aquila for 20 years — fled his home in his pyjamas and described the scene in an interview with the CBC Monday.

"We were sleeping at 3:40 and then all we heard was a rumbling loud sound, something similar to a 747 taking off. Everything was just vibrating vertically and horizontally. I jumped towards my daughter's room and grabbed her and my wife and away we went," he said.

"My wife is a little shook up now. She's reacting now more than this morning. My daughter's okay. She was terrified at first. Everybody's outside. Any green space there is, people are lying there with their cars,children and family."

Rambaldini said he and his family planned to sleep in their car and also erect a tent, where they feel "moresecure," Monday night.

"They're taking out dead people in blue pouches," said Rambaldini. "It's not a pleasant sight. A lot of children are dead also."

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has declared a state of emergency in the region, where the quake shook 26 towns and cities in the Abruzzo region in the Apennine Mountains northeast of Rome about 3:32 a.m. local time. It caused entire blocks of buildings to collapse as residents sleptinside, officials said.

Italian seismologist Gioacchino Giuliani had predicted the possibility of a major quake around L'Aquila several weeks ago, based on the concentration of radon gas in the area.

At least nine smaller tremors had hit the area since the beginning of April.

Giuliani was reported to police for "spreading alarm" and was forced to remove his findings from the internet.

The Civil Protection Agency had reassured locals at the end of March that the tremors were normal for the seismic area.

Bertolaso insisted at a press conference on Monday that no quake could ever be predicted and no evacuation could have been ordered on the basis of the recent jolts.

"There is no possibility of making any predictions on earthquakes. This is a fact in the world's scientific community," Bertolaso said.

Stefania Pezzopane, provincial president of L'Aquila, said residents may have been lulled into complacency because of so many smaller quakes.

"Considering what happened, a bit more concern, more attention might have saved lives," Pezzopane said.

The quake was felt as far way as Rome, where furniture rattled and swayed. But in the medieval city of L'Aquila, Anegla Palumbo, 87, told Reuters she "woke up hearing what sounded like a bomb.

"We managed to escape with things falling all around us. Everything was shaking, furniture falling. I don't remember ever seeing anything like this in my life."

The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake, whose epicentre was about 110 kilometres northeast of Rome, had a magnitude of 6.3, while Italy's National Institute of Geophysics reported it at 5.8.

At least 30 people are unaccounted for, said local paramilitary police. Officials are working with embassies to attempt to determine if any foreigners are trapped under rubble.

"It's the worst tragedy since the start of the millennium," said Bertolaso.

Up to 50,000 people are believed to have been left homeless, said Luca Spoletini, an agency spokesman.

L'Aquila Mayor Massimo Cialente said at least 100,000 people have currently been forced from their homes due to destruction and concerns about damage that could cause other buildings to collapse.

"This means that we'll have several thousand people to assist over the next few weeks and months," Miozzo said.

Evacuees converged on an athletics field on the outskirts of L'Aquila where a makeshift tent camp was being set up. Civil protection officials distributed bread and water to people who lay on the grass next to heaps of their belongings.

Hotels on the Adriatic coast are being requisitioned to shelter the homeless, Berlusconi told reporters at a press conference in L'Aquila.
L'Aquila's streets littered

In the city, twisted steel supports, slabs of walls, furniture and wire fences were strewn about the streets and cars were buried under rubble.

In the streets of L'Aquila, residents covered in dust pushed carts full of clothes and blankets that they had hastily packed before fleeing their homes.

"We left as soon as we felt the first tremors," said Antonio D'Ostilio, 22, as he stood in the streets as aftershocks continued in the region. "We woke up all of a sudden and we immediately ran downstairs in our pyjamas."

A student dormitory also collapsed in the city, trapping at least six students.

"We managed to come down with other students, but we had to sneak through a hole in the stairs as the whole floor came down," said Luigi Alfonsi, 22. "I was in bed — it was like it would never end as I heard pieces of the building collapse around me."

Firefighters aided by dogs are continuing to try to rescue people from crumbled homes in L'Aquila. Rescues crews demanded quiet as people huddled in the streets so they could listen for signs of life from people trapped in the rubble.

Residents and rescue workers worked together to haul away debris by hand and pull out survivors and bodies.
Hospital evacuated

Although the wounded were transported to the city's main St. Salvatore Hospital, parts of the building were evacuated out of fears the structure could also collapse.

Two operating rooms in the hospital remained open, said regional health director Roberto Marzetti.

Medical staff were attempting to treat some patients outside while others were being transported to other facilities. Civil protection crews scrambled to erect a field hospital to deal with the influx of wounded.

Hospitals in the region were appealing for the help of doctors and nurses across Italy while Health Minister Maurizio Sacconi urged Italians to donate blood.

Officials said the town of Castelnuovo, where the quake killed at least five, also appeared especially hard hit.

In the small town of Onna, where 10 people were killed, residents were reportedly deserting the small community to seek refuge elsewhere.

"Some towns in the area have been virtually destroyed in their entirety," said Gianfranco Fini, speaker of the lower house of parliament, before the chamber observed a moment of silence.

Bridges and highways in the region were closed as a precaution.
Historic buildings damaged

L'Aquila's mayor said several historic buildings in the city of 68,000 have been damaged. There were numerous reports that some of the area's centuries-old Romanesque and Renaissance buildings collapsed.

Among the damaged buildings in L'Aquila was a domed church, the cathedral, a museum and a historic castle.

The last major quake to hit central Italy, a 5.4-magnitude temblor, struck the south-central Molise region on Oct. 31, 2002, killing 28 people, including 27 children who died when their school collapsed.

I am very interested to see how or if anything with this seismologist Gioacchino Giuliani develops, given that it appears his warnins were ignored, assuming this is accurate information.

[FSTargetDrone]

More about Gioacchino Giuliani:

Italy muzzled scientist who predicted quake

Mon Apr 6, 2009 5:38pm BST

By Gavin Jones

ROME (Reuters) - An Italian scientist predicted a major earthquake around L'Aquila weeks before disaster struck the city on Monday, killing more than 100 people, but was reported to authorities for spreading panic.

The government on Monday insisted the warning, by seismologist Gioacchino Giuliani, had no scientific foundation but Giuliani said he had been vindicated and wanted an apology.

The first tremors in the region were felt in mid-January and continued at regular intervals, creating mounting alarm in the medieval city, about 100 km (60 miles) 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.

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.

"Now there are people who have to apologize to me and who will have what has happened on their conscience," Giuliani told the website of the daily La Repubblica.

Giuliani, who lives in L'Aquila and developed his findings while working at the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in the surrounding Abruzzo region, said he was helpless to act on Sunday as it became clear to him the quake was imminent.

"I didn't know who to turn to, I had been put under investigation for saying there was going to be an earthquake."

AGENCY REASSURED TOWNSPEOPLE

As the media asked whether, in light of his warnings, the government had protected the population properly, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi seemed on the defensive at a news conference.

He said people should concentrate on relief efforts for now 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 31 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 agency said in a statement on the eve of that meeting.

It said it saw no reason for alarm but was nonetheless carrying out "continuous monitoring and attention."

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

"There is no possibility of predicting an earthquake, that is the view of the international scientific community," he said.

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.

[Ryan Thunder]

Ah, so the authorities are guilty of criminal negligence and/or manslaughter, then.

That should be an amusing trial.

[General Zod]

Does Giuliani's research have any peer reviewed backing? It'd be nice to have a way of predicting earthquakes and all, but how do we know this wasn't just a fluke?

[CaptainChewbacca]

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

"There is no possibility of predicting an earthquake, that is the view of the international scientific community," he said.

Ok, that USED to be true, but we've been forcasting earthquakes with limited success in California for about a decade. It's a huge tragedy that this happened, but Giuliani has achieved the holy grail of seismology; he predicted an earthquake's approximate place and narrowed the time to less than a month. That window is crucial, because a month is about all a city can take for doing emergency preparedness and being 'on alert'. He's got to be careful now, because on the one hand he was undisputably 100% right, but on the other hand it's the first time anyone's gotten that close with a prediction. Expect big things to come from this.

[Ryan Thunder]

Does Giuliani's research have any peer reviewed backing? It'd be nice to have a way of predicting earthquakes and all, but how do we know this wasn't just a fluke?

Ah, good point. The bit about the mafia was clouding my reasoning...

[CaptainChewbacca]

Does Giuliani's research have any peer reviewed backing? It'd be nice to have a way of predicting earthquakes and all, but how do we know this wasn't just a fluke?

I looked for his findings, but they havn't been translated into english. This sort of prediction HAS happened before, but can really only be done on a fault-by-fault basis and not applied to all fault lines everywhere. The real question is going to be if he can do it again.

[Melchior]

Ah, so the authorities are guilty of criminal negligence and/or manslaughter, then.

That should be an amusing trial.

There will be no trial; Bertolaso won't even resign, probably. Anyway, there is no particular reason to suspect mob-connections, it was a rather intense earthquake, the buildings were probably average.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Ah, so the authorities are guilty of criminal negligence and/or manslaughter, then.

That should be an amusing trial.

There will be no trial; Bertolaso won't even resign, probably. Anyway, there is no particular reason to suspect mob-connections, it was a rather intense earthquake, the buildings were probably average.

The thing is, you shouldn't be building 'average' cement buildings in an earthquake zone.

[Melchior]

Ah, so the authorities are guilty of criminal negligence and/or manslaughter, then.

That should be an amusing trial.

There will be no trial; Bertolaso won't even resign, probably. Anyway, there is no particular reason to suspect mob-connections, it was a rather intense earthquake, the buildings were probably average.

The thing is, you shouldn't be building 'average' cement buildings in an earthquake zone.

Most of Italy is such a zone; earthquakes are infrequent enough to make the expense of building better structures (and making it a requirement) unpopular, but then they obviously hit hard when they happen.

[Kodiak]

Does Giuliani's research have any peer reviewed backing? It'd be nice to have a way of predicting earthquakes and all, but how do we know this wasn't just a fluke?

I looked for his findings, but they havn't been translated into english. This sort of prediction HAS happened before, but can really only be done on a fault-by-fault basis and not applied to all fault lines everywhere. The real question is going to be if he can do it again.

Are seismic faults that different? If he saw radon gas = impending quake, isn't that reasonable for other faults, or do we need data on all of them to predict faults on each one? If he was able to create a model for that fault near Rome, can we do one on the San Andreas?

[Phantasee]

Fuck. My sister just came home yesterday morning from her trip to Italy and Greece. They spent a lot of time in Rome, near the beginning. 90 km from danger is never enough distance when your family member is thousands of kilometres from you.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Does Giuliani's research have any peer reviewed backing? It'd be nice to have a way of predicting earthquakes and all, but how do we know this wasn't just a fluke?

I looked for his findings, but they havn't been translated into english. This sort of prediction HAS happened before, but can really only be done on a fault-by-fault basis and not applied to all fault lines everywhere. The real question is going to be if he can do it again.

Are seismic faults that different? If he saw radon gas = impending quake, isn't that reasonable for other faults, or do we need data on all of them to predict faults on each one? If he was able to create a model for that fault near Rome, can we do one on the San Andreas?

The italian fault system is a compression/subduction fault, similar to Japan, while the San Andreas fault system is more analagous to the anatolian (northern turkey) fault. That being said, the potential for using radon gas as an earthquake indicator has been known since 1990 (short 3-page pdf) but I was unaware they had gotten this FAR. Accurate earthquake prediction is to geology as cold fusion is to nuclear physics. It's been 'ten years away' for about 50 years. I still don't think you could apply his methods to just ANY fault, because they'll all behave differently, but I have high hopes radon detection can be adapted to better-known fault systems.

[General Zod]

I found the abstract from 2008 for at least one similar study involving earthquake prediction. If I'm reading it correctly the radon levels predicted an earthquake less than 50% of the time, which seems to indicate it's not exactly a reliable method.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I found the abstract from 2008 for at least one similar study involving earthquake prediction. If I'm reading it correctly the radon levels predicted an earthquake less than 50% of the time, which seems to indicate it's not exactly a reliable method.

Yeah, that's the thing about earthquake prediction. Many times folks have predicted ONE, but nobody's really ever predicted 2 or 3. That article only examined two distinct sites, and it may be that radon is a better indicator in some regions than others, and could give a 70-80% or better indication. It's also important to note that while radon preceeded less than 50% of the earthquakes, it doesn't appear that radon surges ever occurred WITHOUT an earthquake. That means you won't always have radon, but when you do you'd better look out.

[Omega18]

Yeah, that's the thing about earthquake prediction. Many times folks have predicted ONE, but nobody's really ever predicted 2 or 3. That article only examined two distinct sites, and it may be that radon is a better indicator in some regions than others, and could give a 70-80% or better indication. It's also important to note that while radon preceeded less than 50% of the earthquakes, it doesn't appear that radon surges ever occurred WITHOUT an earthquake. That means you won't always have radon, but when you do you'd better look out.

I read an article in which an Italian scientist explicitly disagreed with this idea and stated that you had radon on plenty of occasions without any earthquake.

It should be noted that the individual in question who made the prediction gave actively non-helpful advice with his actual predictions. Even if they had taken him seriously, given his 24 hour prediction they would have immediately evacuated people and everyone basically would have presumably have come back within a couple of days when it turned out the prediction was wrong because they didn't want to stay evacuated from their houses indefinitely.

A little over a week ago, a scientist little known in earthquake circles made a bold prediction of a destructive earthquake around the small town of Sulmona, Italy, based on readings of radon gas. Giampaolo Guiliani went so far as to tell the mayor of Sulmona that it would strike within the next 24 hours. The deadline passed, and nothing happened...

Using radon gas to predict quakes was popular in California in the late 1970s. Researchers at USC, Cal Tech and elsewhere believed changes in the gas levels were a precursor of quakes. In 1979, researchers found gas irregularities before two significant quakes, in Malibu and Big Bear. But the radon method began to lose steam because it could not reliably predict quakes.

Susan Hough, scientist in charge at the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena, who is finishing a book on earthquake prediction, said she hadn’t heard of Guiliani, but she wasn’t surprised that someone was claiming to have predicted the L’aquila quake.

“If you want predictions, they’re out there all the time,” Hough said. “It amazes me all the time that earthquakes happen that aren’t predicted because scientists and amateurs, everybody’s playing the game.”

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2 ... ake-a.html

[Gil Hamilton]

Unfortunately it is more true than not, Mike. I don't know about the specifics of the Abruzzo province, but there is guaranteed to be a mafia presence in construction there. The mafia controls most of Italian cement production and a lot of other stuff.

<snip for space>

Abruzzo is north of Rome, so it's not in the worst place, and this was not a huge quake, but given the way Italy is, it's bad enough.

Abruzzo is a reasonably poor province by Italian standards, yet recently has had a rather significant industrial boom. It's very likely up to it's eyeballs in mafiosa. Probably not to the extent, say, Sicily is, but certainly is full of mafia in their construction and engineering firms.