Avoidable Catastrophe?
Shooting the messenger never was a good idea, not in the bad old days when it occurred violently, physically and with great finality, and not in the present, when the messenger is ostracized, belittled and silenced.Italy has suffered a truly devastating catastrophe. Not one completely unknown in the past. An earthquake, measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale, occurring in the early morning hours, lasting 30 seconds, heaved towns and cities in its mountainous central area into near oblivion. Crushing thousands of homes and buildings, swallowing automobiles into huge crevices, smothering well over two hundred people, leaving over 100,000 homeless.
Twenty-six cities and towns were affected, their people in shock, bemoaning their fate, their newly-impoverished status, and grieving their dead. Rescue workers digging feverishly, searching for survivors. The buried, still alive, could be heard below flattened buildings, begging for release. Some people trapped for almost a day have been rescued; far many more were dug out of the wreckage, dead. The homeless are being sheltered in tents.
A resident of L'Aquilla, the medieval mountain city that appeared to be at the centre of the disaster, forewarned of the event. Gioacchino Giuliani was no ordinary citizen of the city. He happens to be a respected seismologist-geologist who, having detected the increasing presence of radon, heralding a strong earthquake, informed authorities, to warn them of an impending catastrophe.
Vans equipped with loudspeakers drove around L'Aquilla, capital of the Abruzzo region a month earlier, informing the people they must evacuate, on the advice of Mr. Giuliani, a researcher at the National Institute of Astrophysics. In response the city's mayor condemned Mr. Giuliani as an alarmist and accused him of "spreading alarm", insisting that he remove his warnings from the Internet.
Mr. Giuliani, fuming over needlessly lost lives stated: "There are people out there who should be offering me apologies - and whose conscience should bear the full weight of what has happened. It is not true to say that earthquakes cannot be predicted. We have been able to predict events for almost ten years in a range of 120 to 150 kilometres from our detectors."
The head of Italy's National Geophysics Institute, however, denies that capability: "Every time there is an earthquake, there are people who claim to have predicted it. As far as I know, nobody predicted this earthquake with precision. It is not possible to predict earthquakes", claimed Enzo Boschi, who claimed Italy's problem stems from a failure to take precautions.
"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." Some buildings in the earthquake-hit areas were left standing, while others, mere metres distance from them, collapsed utterly, lending credence to this statement.
It would seem, however, that Italy would be better served if Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Boschi ironed out their differences and worked together civilly for the good of the country and their countrymen.
Labels: Environment, Science, World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, April 07, 2009
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