Earthquake Impacts In Central Italy, in the medieval town of L’Aquila, a 6.

3 magnitude
earthquake struck at 3:32am local time on April 6th, 2009.
Social Impacts
• 309 people died in the earthquake and 1,500 people Economic Impacts
were injured. 20 of the victims were children. • The earthquake caused damage to between
Between 40,000 and 50,000 people of the town’s 3,000 and 11,000 buildings in the medieval city of
72,000 population were rendered homeless ( L'Aquila, 95km (60 miles) north-east of Rome (
www.redcross.org.uk/About-us/News/2009/April). www.redcross.org.uk).
• Schools remained closed in the Abruzzo region, the • Several buildings also collapsed, (including a
epicentre of the earthquake (www.redcross.org.uk). university dormitory, churches, and a bell tower –
• Vincenzo Vittorini, 49, was one survivor who was www.news.bbc.co.uk) and many streets were
buried beneath 3 storeys-worth of rubble from his impassable due to fallen masonry.
collapsed house, who says he “heard the voices and • An estimated €4 million loss was the impact on
cries of his wife and daughter in the rubble”, who the regional economy (planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/)
sadly didn’t survive (www.guardian.co.uk).
• Around 40,000 people who were made homeless by
the earthquake found accommodation in tented
camps and a further 10,000 were housed in hotels
on the coast. (www.redcross.org.uk).
• People described finding themselves witnessing the
‘walls of buildings falling away onto the streets’ (
www.guardian.co.uk).
• 88,000 people were left unemployed and 28,000+
students left without access to the university (
www.redcross.org.uk).
• The inhabitants of houses that were completely
unscathed weren’t allowed to return them, instead
being housed in tents guarded by the army (
www.guardian.co.uk).
Environmental Impacts
• Some landslides (secondary hazards) triggered by the earthquake (www.redcross.org.uk
).
• The city’s hospital was badly damaged; doctors had to treat hundreds in the open air, as
only one operating room was functioning (www.news.bbc.co.uk).
• Phone and power lines were downed, and some bridges and roads were closed as a
precaution as the region was hit by a series of aftershocks (www.news.bbc.co.uk).
• L’Aquila correspondents said that the capital city had many old and historic buildings not
strong enough to withstand a strong earthquake (www.redcross.org.uk).
• Infrastructure damage was reported in the surrounding towns and villages of Onna
(arguably the hardest hit, a rural village with two-thirds of its houses destroyed),
Castelnuovo, Poggie Picenzie, Tormintarte, Totani and Villa Sant’Angelo (
www.news.bbc.co.uk).
Management – ‘Generic and ineffective’ risk
assessment
On March 30th, 2009, a 4.6 magnitude tremor preceded the 6.3 magnitude quake on
April 6th. A day after this tremor, L’Aquila’s experts and seismologists attended a
meeting, with the deputy head of Italy’s civil protection agency, Bernado De
Bernardinis, saying that the tremors were “helping the earth release pent up energy"
and calling the situation “favourable”. “The energy release idea was nonsense, the
scientists unplugged their brains and obeyed the politicians”, an editor for local
newspaper Il Centro said.

On the night of April 5th after more tremors, Vincenzo Vittorini, a 49-year old local
surgeon and councillor, says that he thought to himself ‘this is good, the more the
merrier’ and went to bed. Many people took the advice of Italy’s ‘most senior experts’
and stayed in, including lawyer Maurizio Cora, who tried in vain to dig his family out of
his collapsed apartment the following morning. The next day, 308 were dead and the
streets were filled rumble and the remnants of houses, businesses and old buildings.
Above: Securing the dome of the Church of S.Maria del
Suffragio.
Below: Tents on the coast housing homeless inhabitants
Six scientists, including De Bernardinis, were convicted of manslaughter and
handed six-year sentences, not for failing to predict the quake, but for giving
unreliable and unreasonable reassurances that no quake would come, and that the
tremors were beneficial. De Bernardinis said that ‘no one denied what I said in the
announcement’, also implicating the scientists in the frame for the distribution of
misleading information. Investigators overheard Guido Bertolaso (head of Italy’s
civil protection agency, whose phone was tapped at the time under a political
corruption probe) telling an official that the meeting was simply a ‘media event’ to
“quieten imbeciles who feared a big quake”.

This is a prime example of control of state over science, which lead to unreliable
‘reassurance’, and compounded the impacts of the earthquake, with locals putting
their trust in the ‘experts’ and believing that the quake would never come.

The British Red Cross Relief Manager

Pete Garrett said in 2009: “As the
operation moves into a recovery and
rehabilitation phase, given the
devastation caused by the
earthquake its’ expected to take
considerable time and significant
resources.”
 How did people respond to the Earthquake?
Short-term
•Within a short time, 12,000 rescue and support
workers were deployed by the authorities
(‘L’Aquila – a year on’ planetearth.nerc.ac.uk)
•Around 11,000 volunteers helped with the
aftermath, some of which were volunteer
psychologists who offered physical and emotional
support to those affected (www.redcross.org.uk).
•Over 750 Italian Red Cross staff were available to
support the emergency services (
www.redcross.org.uk).
•Over 34,000 homeless were swiftly housed in 161
temporary tented settlements.
•The Italian Red Cross set up 5 field kitchens,
providing up to 22,000 meals a day.
•Italian post office sent mobile offices to homeless
camps to allow access to money and pensions.
•Italian Sky stopped billing people and provided
TVs to homeless camps.
•Italian train companies provided free tickets and
carriages for people to sleep in.
•Mobile companies provided free mobile phones.
•30,000 short-term hardship grants worth 2.4
billion Euros;
•All tax payments stopped by the government.
Long-term.
• Government to pay for 100% of rebuilding
and reconstruction – rebuilding the dome of
the Church of S. Maria del Suffragio is
expected to take years (www.enea.it/).
• New towns to be funded by the Government
• 67% of those displaced have returned home,
with others in anti-seismic temporary
residences (www.bbc.co.uk/in-depth)
• It also established a field hospital to relieve the
burden on local health facilities, which are under an
enormous strain.
• 36 ambulances from the Italian Red Cross are on
rotation to evacuate injured people from L'Aquila to
the hospitals in Tagliacozzo, Pescina and Avezzano
and it is also evacuating an orphanage in San
Gregorio and will ensure care is provided for all the
children.
• With up to 10,000 buildings in the city expected to
be badly damaged, if not destroyed, the Italian Red
Cross foresees growing problems with shelter,
warm clothes and food provisions for the survivors.
http://www.radicalgeography.co.uk/laquilasum.pdf