Monday, April 6, 2009

Italy muzzled scientist who foresaw earthquake

Raw Story

A powerful earthquake tore through central Italy on Monday killing more than 90 people as Renaissance buildings in a historic town were reduced to rubble.

We're not unfamiliar with earthquakes out here in California. I shudder to think of all the unreinforced masonry there must be in a medieval Italian town, or how you would go about earthquake-retrofitting it without destroying it. We have been reinforcing buildings out here since the Long Beach earthquake of 1933, and we don't have very many brick homes for the same reason. Frame houses will shake around a lot, but they'll stay standing even if they are damaged, and if one does fall on you, you stand a better chance of surviving than if tons of masonry fall on you.

That said, my heart goes out to the affected folks over there.

Probably the most research on earthquakes in California is in how to predict them. See the Parkfield earthquake experiment just for one. It looks like this is coming along OK.

The quake hadn't been completely unexpected. Italy muzzled a scientist who foresaw it.

"Vans with loudspeakers had driven around the town a month ago telling locals to evacuate their houses after seismologist Gioacchino Giuliani predicted a large quake was on the way, prompting the mayor's anger," Gavin Jones reports for Reuters.

Jones adds, "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."

The Telegraph reports he also "posted a video on YouTube in which he said a build-up of radon gas around the seismically active area suggested a major earthquake was imminent."

I am glad Mr. (Dr.?) Giuliani was able to foresee the event, but I think the science of earthquake prediction is not yet at the point of being able to give practical timely warning. It's not his fault that his warning was considerably previous, he tried to do good.

The problem is with human nature. To most people, I think, 'imminent' means 'in the next ten minutes'. They'll evacuate buildings and hang around with their day on hold for maybe an hour or two, then the prediction is called hogwash and it's back to business as usual. Thirty days is an eternity.

So's a week. I offer as example the fact that the attack on Pearl Harbor was predicted to happen on or about November 31, and the military in Hawai'i was on full alert for several days around that time frame. By the time the attack actually came on December 7, all hands had stood down and were caught completely by surprise.

Obviously, predicting an earthquake thirty days out is useless, good intentions notwithstanding. A day in advance might be too much. Research must continue until the authorities can say with great finality, "GET OUT NOW!". Until that day...

In other words, if you are going to run in circles, scream and shout "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!", there had damn well better be pieces of it on the ground you can point to or people will think you're a quack, however correct your prediction turns out to have been later.

Alternatively, of course, the day may come when an accurate prediction will be possible several days out and we can mark our calendars. Until that day...

Just as an aside, livestock, pets, and other animals seem to be pretty good at sensing imminent earthquakes, though not good enough that dumb ol' humans can pick up on what they're saying unless they're abnormally alert. Gummint scientists, in their wisdom, deny that any such of an unscientific thing could possibly occur, even though it's been goin' on since before science. Us dumbass country f**ks have animals we can watch, but I guess city folks only have pigeons. Heh.

Since seismology and vulcanology are closely related and intertwined, whatever we do, we must not let Governor Jindal hear about earthquake research lest he deem it 'liberal pork' or 'anti-christian' or something equally ludicrous!

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