Italy is a very seismically active country where hundreds of tremors occur every year and major earthquakes are not an infrequent occurrence. Three years ago a 6.3 quake struck the Italian town of L’Aquila causing severe damage, injuring over a thousand people and killing 308.

Now L’Aquila has a long history of earthquakes and it contained many ancient and fragile buildings which had already been partially destroyed three times by earthquakes over the centuries. This time however the public had someone to blame for their misfortune, the scientists working for the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks.

“This is not thirst for revenge, it is just that our sister is not coming back,” said Claudia Carosi.

There had been a series of low level tremors in the months leading up to the quake and in the aftermath many felt this showed that the earthquake should have been predicted and a clear warning given. Other scientists around the world however argue that earthquakes are still impossible to accurately predict and that in any case even a clear warning would not have appreciably changed either the damage or the death toll.

Government prosecutors nonetheless charged the six scientists and one government official working for the commission with manslaughter, arguing that the commission had given “incomplete, imprecise and contradictory” information on the danger after a meeting on March 31, 2009, a few days before the earthquake.

Defense lawyers tried to argue that earthquakes simply could not be predicted and that even if they could nothing could have been done to prevent one.

“If an event cannot be foreseen and, more to the point, cannot be avoided, it is hard to understand how there can be any suggestion of a failure to predict the risk,” defense lawyer Franco Coppi said before the verdict was delivered.

In the Reuters article on the case they note that…

The key to the dispute is the kind of cautious language, hedged by caveats and reserves which scientists typically use in predicting highly uncertain events, but which can be of limited use as a guideline for the general public.

According to scientific opinion cited by prosecutors, the dozens of lower level tremors seen before the quake were typical of the kind of preliminary seismic activity seen before major earthquakes such as the one that struck on April 6.

Instead of highlighting the danger, they said the experts had made statements playing down the threat of a repeat of the earthquakes which wrecked the town in 1349, 1461 and 1703, saying the smaller shocks were a “normal geological phenomenon.”

That is because they were a “normal geological phenomenon” tremors happen in the area almost continuously…

Central Italy is continuously shaken by low level tremors, very few of which precede bigger earthquakes, and they are generally marked by no more than a brief statement from civil protection authorities.

Besides, as any Seismologist will tell you tremors could mean that an earthquake is building up or they could mean that the pressure is being released thru the tremors making a major quake less likely. There was just no way to tell with the technology at our disposal what those tremors really signified until the 6.3 earthquake revealed the answer.

On Monday in a laughably farcical miscarriage of justice the Italian Court found all seven men guilty of manslaughter and sentenced them to six years in prison even though prosecutors had only asked for them to be sentenced to four years. The case is being appealed and they are not likely to serve their prison term until after an appeal trial is conducted.

More…

____________________________

Edit: Also see this page for an article that focuses more on the scapegoating aspect of this prosecution as a sop to the bereaved families.