Aftershocking verdictFollow

What.
There's more story in the link. I still can't quite wrap my head around this. Perhaps I'll edit in some thoughts later.

After finally having a moment to read the full thing, it doesn't sound like it. As noted in the article, earthquakes are really hard to truly predict with any real accuracy. Either way, barring something that proves they willfully mislead with their statements, I worry about the precedent this sets.

You're right. In the absense of outside motivation, this sets a nasty precedent. In no way should scientists ever be held accountable for the variability of mother nature. This is not the same as predicting a levy will hold, for example. I just can't help but wonder that the same sentiment surely had to be shared among the court members and that something truly negative had to come to light to allow such a verdict to pass. I guess this is a case of "it's so ridiculous, I can't believe it at face value" cases.

The article you quoted illustrates what I was getting at. It shouldn't take another disaster like the Sumatra earthquake to convince government entities of the need to prepare against risk. If there's a failure there, it absolutely should be dealt with. Is it criminal? Maybe, I don't know. Allowing the whole thing to slip under the rug is detrimental in any case.

Given that there's virtually always some degree of contradicting evidence in science it is a bit scary. On the other hand there's something to be said for telling people to prepare for the worst, and hoping for the best.

Shifts the blame onto the lazy populace and off your shoulders.

Reading the article Joph linked, I'm highly inclined to side with the scientists here.

For one, they were a National council, NOT some commission convened by L'Aquila for risk evaluation. L'Aquila is a high-risk area, which should have been reviewing this for DECADES. Expecting one 6 person national panel to do it in a couple of months is absurd.

Two, the scientists arrived at the commission meeting without being warned that it would be open. They hadn't prepared public statements, because they hadn't intended to be engaging the public at that time. They convened to assess the risk of an imminent earthquake, not to give detailed instructions on what to do during one.

Third, they had to spend the bulk of their time telling the public not to worry. They were holding a special commission in L'Aquila for two reasons. 1, because there had been months of persistent quakes. 2, because an amateur seismologist had been spreading his theory of a massive, imminent quake. Step one absolutely had to be to assuage public fear. Panic doesn't help anyone, regardless of whether that's during a disaster or not. They calmed the population, and unfortunately a quake hit. But would the quake have been better if it happened in a town predisposed to panic? I'm guessing not, because a lot of the people still alive are so because of rescue efforts.

This is a town where earthquakes are the norm. They know what to do during quakes--they have them all the time. Procedure doesn't change according to the intensity of a quake. All they would have told the townspeople are things all of them already knew.

The problem is that people assumed "low risk of a high-magnitude quake" meant "stop following procedure." And I don't think that's the scientists' fault.

I don't think you can reduce the blame down to this commission. The town should have been conducting surveys on their buildings for a long time, the local systems should have been spreading info on earthquake procedure (I'm betting evacuation routes aren't decided on by the commission), the commission should have been warned they'd be addressing the public so they could issue a statement (and have had a closed door meeting before hand for the scientific review), etc.

This seems like a desire to blame someone to me.

Wait...so now people are being prosecuted for natural disasters occurring?

What the hell is wrong with people?

Is there at least a cliff notes version or a table of contents I could look over in the meantime?

No, they're being prosecuted because the people doing the suing believe the deaths would have been easily preventable. Whether or not that is true is beyond me since I'm not going to go digging into more than the articles linked here.

So much is left out of the articles. Aside from the recent swarm of small quakes, is there a seismic history in the area? Was the depth and attitude of the known faults understood?

Italy is a pretty active seismic area overall. I'd be interested to know whether the scientists answered a question like, "Should we be concerned about a major quake?" with something like, "No more so than anywhere in Italy."

California is probably one of the best-studied earthquake zones in the world, and the most you'll get out of a seismologist here is, "Be ready for anything." If you really push, they'll say something like, "A major quake WILL happen, but we can't predict exactly where or when."

The seismologists should probably have hedged their replies better at the very least. Without knowing what they did say, I can't tell why they were punished. But nearly all Italians live in seismically active areas. And retrofitting buildings and infrastructure is expensive and time consuming and no one wants to do it; but maybe they should.

The area is a seismic hot spot. Earthquakes are a way of life there. But the last major earthquake was in the 1700s, and most of the buildings haven'tn designed to stand up to seismic waves at higher magnitudes.

The overall message of the meeting seemed to have been "We can't guarantee against a major quake, but many smaller quakes statistically tend to alleviate the stress that can cause a major quake."

I'm not seeing much anger over what they actually said, it largely seems to be about what they did say. Some people are pissed that they spent most of the meeting trying to quell fears, but I'm not sure that's fair. I'd need to see a video of the meeting to decide. I mean, were they answering questions? Were those questions such that they had to keep repeating assurances?

What's really bothering me, though, is that the scientists apparently didn't know they'd be meeting with the public. You can't hold them negligent for not delivering information if they weren't warned they'd need to. I also worry about the precedent of a national 6-person commission being held responsible for a single town.

Was this a trial by jury? I don't remember any article saying.

I guess I don't know, we're the people told this at anytime? I'm assuming not? Seems odd if it wasn't said for whatever reason.

We've been told to prepare for 'the big one,' it's heard on a regular basis, people make movies about it, blah blah blah. 80% chance in the next 50 years or whatever the line is these days; and we're not a bunch of raving panicked loons.

Well at least not any more than the rest of the country...

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