On Trial For Manslaughter For Failing to Predict Earthquake

Yes, this is the quick answer ....

In truth, it's an American football weekend, so as kickoff approaches Seattle, you get the quick answer:

I would make two points to start with:

• Recalling my earlier acknowledgment that I am looking at this situation with presuppositions derived from American jurisprudence, I can certainly say that while one can reasonably argue there is some question about whether or not the Commission did its job properly, this wouldn't be coming to trial in the U.S. There could certainly be a public process on this, but it wouldn't be to trial, even two and a half years after the event.

• In truth, there must be something I'm missing in the factual record; your storm analogy seems a little simplistic insofar as I don't see it happening that way. In the States, we routinely blow it on storms. Katrina's toll owes something to the dike and levee system being overrepresented, or, perhaps, the storm surge underrepresented. We once had folks hit by a tornado with no warning because Clear Channel ran the station, which means they were piping a feed from someplace on the coasts into the midwest, with the result that when storm warnings went out there was nobody local to cut in and inform the public. Nobody goes to trial over these things; that's probably an outcome of statutory conditions, though.​

Additionally, I would reiterate that I don't listen to weathermen. I know that's a light way of stating it, but living in the Puget Sound region, we're subject to earthquakes, though it's not like living in southern California. But I think of it, in this case, in terms both of seismology and its slightly more specific friend vulcanology. Ever since 1980, residents of Washington state have learned to live with a powderkeg volcano next door, and in the wake of Mt. St. Helens, we have the looming spectre of Mt. Rainier exploding in our faces. The chances change all the time, but Mt. Rainier is on a clock to pitch a major hissy-cow sometime in the next ten- to one hundred-thousand years. And we all know that also means it could be tomorrow. What I'm getting at is that the case of those in L'Aquila who trusted the scientists and went home to their doom, or however that goes, doesn't ring true to living in earthquake territory. To wit, I know that the longer a sequence of shocks goes on, the more energy is released, and generally—statistically—speaking, this means the danger is reducing over time. But I also played a game, as a kid, called Booby Trap, in which you similarly caused minor temblors by removing wooden discs from the board until something slipped, the spring released, and the pressure arm swept all the pieces off the board. What I'm getting at is that it is possible for aftershocks to set up a new major quake. Scoot, scoot, scoot, scoot, and then, suddenly, leap. I see this process every day in life, in little ways. Dirt, flour, sand, even piles of leaves. A child's toy box. What the data says is what the data says, and that's fine. But I never forget that the data is history, and the projection is merely a projection. We won't know conditions have changed until after the change occurs. What happened? Something else broke underground; something big. The settling of the land distributed pressure in such a fashion as to cause another catastrophic slip in the fault. This can happen. I don't see how one can live in an earthquake region and not understand this.

The way the people of L'Aquila come across in the complaint just doesn't ring right to me. Even the idea that with a different warning, they wouldn't have gone home to their deaths seems completely backwards to me. Around here, you don't want to be outside; there are trees, utility poles, power lines, exploding capacitors, windows falling out of buildings, façades collapsing. Around here our custom is that we are, generally—again, statistically—safer indoors.

Nothing fits together the way it should. I would suggest that is a major problem people are having understanding how this trial isn't a farce. It sounds more like a bad movie, and sure, that seems characteristic of the Italian government in general, but a number of factors seem counterintuitive, and resolving that question is a major fault line running through the range of perceptions and, thus, opinions.

Nothing about this case sounds right.

 

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However, this assessment appears at odds with what seismologists have known for at least 20 years—that small earthquakes increase the likelihood that a powerful event will happen in the near future, even if the absolute probability of such an event remains low. Indeed, Warner Marzocchi and Anna Maria Lombardi of the INGV showed that a few hours before the earthquake actually struck modelling would have suggested the chance that a powerful quake would occur within 10 kilometres of L’Aquila within three days rose from one in 200,000 (the background level) to about one in 1,000.

Thomas Jordan, an Earth scientist at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, who chaired an international review of earthquake forecasting in Italy in the wake of L’Aquila’s quake, says that these calculations must be put into context. He points out that, with the exception of an informal system in California, no country in the world has yet set up regular probabilistic earthquake forecasting that can be used to guide emergency actions. The hope of policymakers until recently was that research would identify precursor signals that could predict earthquakes with near certainty.​

trippy
would you have any idea what the bolded refers to?

 

I haven't noticed this before, but now that I read the link in the OP in its entirety:

There is this paragraph:

Funding needed

We put this to the mayor of L'Aquila, Massimo Cialente. He hopes the trial will prompt a national debate, and make it easier for him to raise the funds and support he needs to protect people against future earthquakes.

He said six days before the major quake he moved local children from a school damaged in an earlier tremor. He said he had no official budget to do that, because prevention is not a national priority.

"We closed the school and we had to transfer 500 pupils. I needed money, but I started the work without the money. If the quake did not happen I would be charged for that." ​

The red bolded part. What does it mean?? :shrug:

 

I means either he would have paid out of his pocket or been arrested?? Damned if you do and damned if you don't I guess. What a fuckin mess.

 

Yeah :bugeye: (thanks for the reply, btw, I wasn't exactly sure what does it mean "to be charged" in this context).

 

See tiassa its irrevelent what they "would have done" or "might have done", they wernt given the choice. Hense my earlier post about Rogers v Whitiker. INFORMED concent, without infomation people cant make acurate determinations and by giving false infomation its quite easy to manipulate people, especially when they are scared.

 

nice to see you avioided the question asked.

 

The bushfire equivelant would be "there won't be one next week as we're in the rainy season" - so if you have an unusual dry spell and suddenly there is one, does that make the person at fault? Of course not, because you couldn't have predicted that.

Actually there really isn't a bushfire equivelant, because you can't accurately predict when and where those occur either beyond stating they will most likely occur in hot dry weather. Yet you're still trying to make analogies why someone is to blame for something that cannot be predicted. :bugeye:

 

yes trippy its quite ovious that your argument boils down to scientists should be above the law, which is just stupid

Tiassa's comment on "free speach" ignores the fact that they were paid to do a job and therefore are responcible for doing or not doing that job.

Basically there was enough evidence for the case to go to trial, hense trippy's opinion is invalid. Its as simple as that. Wether they did what they have been accused of or not is a matter for the trial but the basic inditment is oviously valid. If it wasnt it would never have made it to court anymore than a charge of murder could be sustained with the alleged victom testifying