Italy shaken by ‘apocalyptic’ earthquake

The ground in central Italy began to shake at 3.36am. Over just 20 seconds, a 6.2 magnitude earthquake brought buildings in rural villages crumbling to the ground. At least 80 aftershocks followed over the next few hours, and there could still be more to come. ‘The roads in and out of town are cut off,’ said the mayor of Amatrice, a historic town in the Apennine mountains close to the quake’s epicentre. ‘Half the town is gone,’ he mourned.

Throughout yesterday, locals and emergency services rescued as many people as possible. But so far, authorities say that the earthquake has claimed at least 247 lives, and left hundreds homeless.

The Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi offered some words of comfort. ‘When things don’t go well, the whole of Italy demonstrates its most beautiful aspects,’ he said. ‘We will make sure that we won’t leave any families or communes on their own.’

This was far from Italy’s first earthquake — thousands of lives and buildings have been lost over the centuries. This is because the country rests on the seams between the African and Eurasian tectonic plates, making it extremely vulnerable to tremors as the earth shifts. Meanwhile, scientists say the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west is slowly ‘opening up’, pulling apart the Apennine mountain range where yesterday’s disaster struck.

But while Italy experiences small earthquakes almost every day, it cannot predict when true disaster will strike.

This is, understandably, a source of much distress. When a similar earthquake killed 309 people in 2009, six scientists were jailed for telling residents not to worry beforehand. And yet they were giving the best advice they could; the tremors which preceded it should have made a major event less likely, not more.

The problem has puzzled scientists for hundreds of years. They have tried studying radon levels, electromagnetic waves, even unusual animal behaviour. But nothing is reliable. And in the meantime, lives continue to be destroyed.

Seismic waves

We must not give up hope, say scientists. Testing theories, failing, and trying something new is the history of almost all scientific achievement. It can feel frustrating when the answer eludes us, but we are getting closer all the time. One of these days, we will crack it — and thousands of lives will be saved.

Others are unsure. Perhaps the reason we cannot find reliable signs of natural disasters is that they simply do not exist. Instead, researchers should look for ways of coping with earthquakes when they do strike, particularly in vulnerable areas. Many lives have been saved by new quake-proof buildings in Japan, for example. We should apply that knowledge to reinforce older buildings too.