[CEUS-earthquake-hazards] Italian Geoscientists Indicted for Manslaughter for Failing to Predict 2009 L'Aquila Earthquake

[Phyllis Steckel]

Greetings, all.

Both the Association of Engineering Geologists (AEG) and various committees within the Geological Society of America (GSA) are circulating this request.  

It is for petition-support to Italian geoscientists who have been indicted for manslaughter because they did not "predict" the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake.

For your information and action.

Thanks.

Earthquake Insight LLC
Phyllis J. Steckel, RG
PO Box 2002
Washington, MO 63090
636-239-4013
psteckel at charter.net

"Minimizing earthquake risk is a funny business.  The payoff may not come for a long time - and then it will be in terms of what did not happen.."


********

Two weeks ago the L'Aquila Prosecutor's office indicted of manslaughter the members of the National High Risk Committee that met in L'Aquila one week before the Mw6.3 earthquake.  The charges are for failing to provide a short term alarm to the population before the earthquake struck, killing more than 300 people.


The president of INGV, Enzo Boschi (member of the High Risk Committee), and the director of the National Earthquake Center, Giulio Selvaggi (just accompanying Boschi to the meeting as technical specialist), are among the scientists in seismology and earthquake engineering now under investigation together with some civil protection officials.

We think that the allegations against the scientists are completely unfounded and we look for support on this from the international scientific community working on earthquakes and in the Earth sciences in general.

We invite you to sign the letter addressed to the President of the Italian Republic, published at the the web page www.mi.ingv.it/open_letter/ We also would be glad if you could extend this invitation to other seismologists that can possibly share our initiative.

We hope that by this action we can increase the awareness of people on earthquake risk reduction through education, preparedness, and a long term program of building  reinforcement.

Thank you in advance for your support.

Daniela Pantosti
Alberto Michelini
Alessandro Amato
Massimo Cocco
Ingrid Hunstad
Warner Marzocchi
Claudio Chiarabba
Massimiliano Stucchi
-- 
Daniela Pantosti
Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia
Via Vigna Murata 605 - 00143 ROMA
daniela.pantosti at ingv.it
+39 0651860483              
+39 0651860483
+39 3357927038
fax +39 0651860507

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://geohazards.usgs.gov/pipermail/ceus-earthquake-hazards/attachments/20100617/b496df5b/attachment.html>