Surely among the most absurd judicial decisions in recent
memory is the verdict by an Italian court that sends seven Italian earthquake
experts to jail for six year terms. Their alleged crime, worthy of convictions
for manslaughter and damage claims of $10.2 million, was for minimizing the
risks of an earthquake to the residents of an Italian town after tremors struck
the region. In the subsequent earthquake, over 300 people died. Though the
prosecutors insist that the crime was not for failing to predict an earthquake,
it amounts to the same thing. The guilty verdict must elicit incredulity; it presumes knowledge that does not exist, in effect postulating certainty in what is clearly a vastly uncertain enterprise. Though
one expert says that the decision will lead scientists to keep their mouths shut, the
more likely consequence (pointed out in the BBC piece below) is a mountain of
false alarms.
Seven prominent Italian earthquake
experts were convicted of manslaughter on Monday and sentenced to six years in
prison for failing to give adequate warning to the residents of a seismically
active area in the months preceding an earthquake that killed more than 300
people.
Speaking in a hushed courtroom in
L’Aquila, the city whose historic center was gutted by the April 2009
earthquake, the judge, Marco Billi, read a long list of names of those who had
died or been injured in the disaster before he handed down the sentences to six
scientists and a former government official. The defendants, who said they
would appeal the decision, will also have to pay court costs and damages of
$10.2 million.
The seven, most of them
seismologists and geologists, were members of the National Commission for the
Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks, which met shortly before the quake
struck — after weeks of frequent small tremors — but did not issue a safety
warning.
The verdicts jolted the
international scientific community, which feared they might open the way to an
onslaught of legal actions against scientists who evaluate the risks of natural
hazards. “This is the death of public service on the part of professors and
professionals,” said Luciano Maiani, the current president of the risks
commission, according to the news agency Ansa. The legal and media pressure
prompted by the trial have made it impossible to carry out professional
consultancies for the state, he said, adding, “This doesn’t happen anywhere
else in the world.”
Thomas H. Jordan, a professor at
the University of Southern California, led a commission that after the disaster
advised the Italian government about better ways to communicate earthquake
risks to the public. He described the verdicts as incredible, “given that they
have just convicted scientists for basically doing their job during a time of
crisis.”
“I’m afraid it’s going to teach
scientists to keep their mouths shut,” he added.
Scientists said the case raised the
issue of when a public warning is appropriate. While predicting the exact time
and location of an earthquake is not possible, seismologists are increasingly
able to forecast the likelihood that a quake might occur in a certain area
within a certain time. But if the likelihood is very low — as it was in this
case, despite the increased seismic activity in the weeks before — a warning
may do more harm than good. Lawyers for the defendants were unanimous on Monday
in their condemnation of the sentence, which exceeded the prosecution’s request
of four years in prison, and vowed to appeal.
“I wasn’t expecting this,” said
Alfredo Biondi, a defense lawyer. He described the ruling as one of the most
erroneous that he had encountered in his long career.
“This was a trial that should not
have been held in L’Aquila” because the emotional impact of the quake is still
felt so strongly in the city, said Filippo Dinacci, who represents two of the
defendants.
More than three years after the
earthquake, L’Aquila, in the Abruzzo region east of Rome, has yet to recover
fully. Its architecturally rich center is still largely abandoned, and
residents are still mourning the dead. There are some sporadic signs of
reconstruction around the center, including the inauguration last month of an
auditorium designed by Renzo Piano, but the overall mood in the city speaks
more of discouragement and dismay.
The city and surrounding towns were
felled by the magnitude 6.3 quake in the early hours of April 6, 2009. The
disaster left thousands homeless and killed 309, many of them in their sleep.
Six days before the quake, the
risks commission met to assess the situation after the period of frequent small
quakes. The seismic activity had made the public anxious, as had a series of
specific quake predictions — none of which proved to be accurate — by a local
man who is not a scientist. After the meeting, some commission members gave
encouraging statements to the news media, which prosecutors said gave residents
an overly reassuring picture of the risks they faced. The commission,
prosecutors charged, did not uphold its mandate and consequently did not allow
residents to make informed decisions about whether to stay or leave their
homes.
In his closing arguments on Monday
the prosecutor, Fabio Picuti, cited a United States court ruling that blamed
the Army Corps of Engineers for “monumental negligence” for some of the
flooding from Hurricane Katrina, Ansa reported. That case, Mr. Picuti said,
demonstrates that it is possible to fall short of preventing and predicting a
risk, according to Ansa.
Relatives of the victims cheered
the decision. “It’s just a tiny bit of justice so that it doesn’t happen
again,” said an unidentified woman on Sky television.
The court did not rule on whether
earthquakes can be predicted. But Fabio Alessandroni, a civil lawyer who
represents the relatives of more than a dozen victims, said the sentence showed
that it is possible to have a “culture of prevention.”
“It is possible to predict a risk
and to adopt measures that mitigate that risk,” Mr. Alessandroni said. “It’s
what the commission is supposed to do,” taking various elements, like a city’s
seismic history, into account. “And this was not done in L’Aquila.”
Elisabetta Povoledo and Henry Fountain, “Italy
Orders Jail Terms for 7 Who Didn’t Warn of Deadly Earthquake,” New York
Times, October 22, 2012.
* * *
An
open letter to Italian president Giorgio Napolitano, signed by over 5,000
scientists and issued before the decision of the court, underlines the
error of the proceeding:
Years of research, much of it
conducted by distinguished seismologists in your own country, have demonstrated
that there is no accepted scientific method for earthquake prediction that can
be reliably used to warn citizens of an impending disaster. To expect more of
science at this time is unreasonable. It is manifestly unfair for scientists to
be criminally charged for failing to act on information that the international
scientific community would consider inadequate as a basis for issuing a
warning. Moreover, we worry that subjecting scientists to criminal charges for
adhering to accepted scientific practices may have a chilling effect on
researchers, thereby impeding the free exchange of ideas necessary for progress
in science and discouraging them from participating in matters of great public
importance.
* * *
A report from the BBC provides further detail on the state
of the scientific understanding, noting that predicting an earthquake is
extremely difficult:
When a large amount of stress is
built up in the Earth's crust, it will mostly be released in a single large
earthquake, but some smaller-scale cracking in the build-up to the break will
result in precursor earthquakes. These small quakes precede around half of all
large earthquakes, and can continue for days to months before the big break.
Some scientists have even gone so
far as to try to predict the location of the large earthquake by mapping the
small tremors. The "Mogi Doughnut Hypothesis" suggests that a
circular pattern of small precursor quakes will precede a large earthquake
emanating from the centre of that circle.
While half of the large earthquakes
have precursor tremors, only around 5% of small earthquakes are associated with
a large quake. So even if small tremors are felt, this cannot be a reliable
prediction that a large, devastating earthquake will follow. "There is no
scientific basis for making a prediction", said Dr Richard Walker of the
University of Oxford. . . .
The minute changes in the movement,
tilt, and the water, gas and chemical content of the ground associated with
earthquake activity can be monitored on a long term scale. Measuring devices
have been integrated into early warning systems that can trigger an alarm when
a certain amount of activity is recorded.
Such early warning systems have
been installed in Japan, Mexico and Taiwan, where the population density and
high earthquake risk pose a huge threat to people's lives. But because of the
nature of all of these precursor reactions, the systems may only be able to
provide up to 30 seconds' advance warning.
"In the history of earthquake
study, only one prediction has been successful", explains Dr Walker. The
magnitude 7.3 earthquake in 1975 in Haicheng, North China was predicted one day
before it struck, allowing authorities to order evacuation of the city, saving
many lives. But the pattern of seismic activity that this prediction was based
on has not resulted in a large earthquake since, and just a year later in 1976 a
completely unanticipated magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck nearby Tangshan
causing the death of over a quarter of a million people. The
"prediction" of the Haicheng quake was therefore just a lucky
unrepeatable coincidence.
A major problem in the prediction
of earthquake events that will require evacuation is the threat of issuing
false alarms. Scientists could warn of a large earthquake every time a
potential precursor event is observed, however this would result in huge
numbers of false alarms which put a strain on public resources and might
ultimately reduce the public's trust in scientists.
"Earthquakes are complex
natural processes with thousands of interacting factors, which makes accurate
prediction of them virtually impossible," said Dr Walker.
Seismologists agree that the best
way to limit the damage and loss of life resulting from a large earthquake is
to predict and manage the longer-term risks in an earthquake-prone area. These
include the likelihood of building collapsing and implementing emergency plans.
"Detailed scientific research
has told us that each earthquake displays almost unique characteristics,
preceded by foreshocks or small tremors, whereas others occur without warning.
There simply are no rules to utilise in order to predict earthquakes,"
said Dr Dan Faulkner, senior lecturer in rock mechanics at the University of
Liverpool.
"Earthquake prediction will
only become possible with a detailed knowledge of the earthquake process. Even
then, it may still be impossible."
Leila
Battison, “Can we
predict when and where quakes will strike?” BBC News, September, 20, 2011.
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