L’AQUILA – Seven scientists and other experts have gone on trial on manslaughter charges for allegedly failing to sufficiently warn residents before a devastating earthquake that killed more than 300 people in central Italy in 2009.
The case is being closely watched by seismologists around the globe who insist it is impossible to predict earthquakes.
They say seismologists will be discouraged from issuing any advice at all if they fear legal retaliation.
Last year, about 5,200 international researchers signed a petition supporting their Italian colleagues, while the Seismological Society of America wrote to Italy’s president expressing concern about what it called an unprecedented legal attack on science. The seven defendants are accused of giving “inexact, incomplete and contradictory information” about whether smaller tremors felt by L’Aquila residents in the six months before the earthquake on April 6th, 2009, should have constituted grounds for a warning.
“We all know well that earthquakes cannot be predicted. This is not in the point here,” said Vincenzo Vittorini, a relative of a victim, who attended the Rome trial.
Rather, he said, because of the failure of the scientists to say a significant quake could be possible, victims and their relatives missed a chance to take preventative measures. – (PA)