Scientists face verdict for failing to predict Italy quake

Maurizio Degl'innocenti / EPA, file

More than 300 people died after a quake in L'Aquila, Italy on April 6, 2009. The city was strewn with rubble and thousands left homeless.

By Peter Jeary, NBC News

A court in the Italian city of L?Aquila is expected to hand down verdicts on Monday to six scientists and one government official charged with manslaughter for failing to give sufficient warning of a fatal earthquake that hit in 2009.

The case centers around a meeting the seven defendants, all members of a commission on natural disasters, held in L?Aquila on March 31, 2009, in which they told residents there was no cause for concern after a series of minor shocks had rocked the city in the preceding six months.?

In the early hours of April 6, a 6.3-magnitude quake?reduced much of the medieval city to rubble, leaving 309 people dead and more than 60,000 homeless, according to news reports at the time.

In a memo issued after the March 31 meeting, the seven experts concluded that it was "improbable" that there would be a major quake, although they stopped short of entirely excluding the possibility.

The public prosecutor, Fabio Picuti, has accused the defendants of giving "inexact, incomplete and contradictory information" about whether the smaller tremors should have constituted grounds for an official quake warning.

Picuti said he realizes that predicting where, when and with what force a quake would strike is beyond the current abilities of science, but stresses that the risk of a big quake was not taken seriously enough. He argues the commission?s discussions, as recorded in its official minutes, were too generic and completely failed to address the risk at hand.

Italy's long earthquake history hidden in ancient records

Some of those affected by the quake claim the commission?s reassurances had influenced their decisions.

?We were comforted and reassured by the statements of these scientists, therefore that night we stayed at home,? said Anna Maria Cialente, mother of one of the victims. ?My son was confident in the words of these experts? and he was persuaded to stay at his student house which collapsed.?

Scientists on trial for failing to predict Italian quake

Although much of the scientific community has expressed outrage at the trial it has focused international attention on the ability of seismologists o predict earthquakes and the way in which their warnings should be communicated.

In a report?commissioned by the Italian government in the immediate aftermath of the L?Aquila disaster, the International Commission of Earthquake Forecasting for Civil Protection (ICEF) highlighted the many difficulties of making accurate time-sensitive predictions, within timescales usually calculated in decades, not weeks or months. ?

But the ICEF report?s findings also called for better public communication, not just of the day-to-day hazards but also by setting alert levels that take into account the advantage of being psychologically prepared for when the quake hits.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Source: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/22/14611225-scientists-face-verdict-for-failing-to-predict-italy-quake?lite

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