As the Abruzzo earthquake death toll approaches 300, Italian science evaluates the damage that it has caused. As Nature reports, the National Gran Sasso Labs, which is where I have worked part of my time for the Cosmic Silence Experiment, last year, sufferred no damage despite being only a few km away from the epicentre. The University of L’Aquila, however, suffered significant damage. Students found death in the collapse of a city dormitory. The University is trying to raise funds to secure that the Academic year is not wasted.
I live in Rome, about 85 km away from L’Aquila, in a 6th floor flat. At 3:30AM I jumped off a seriously shaking bed and watched the walls acting and sounding like springs. Ran to my son’s room with a pounding heart to find him fast asleep. I was exactly his age when, in 1980, the quake hit the Irpinia region, to kill almost 3,000.
At 7AM I called a friend and colleague, Marco B., who was speaking from outside his home in L’Aquila with his family. He exorcised his fear as he laughed at the story that everything had fallen off shelves and walls, TV, books, vases, so that now they had the chance to throw away some old stuff and buy some new. They were lucky to live in a very recently built home, which apparently had suffered no damage. Marco said that they could hear the sirens running all over the place in the city. At that time, they had found just 16 victims. Hours later, the whole world knew what was going on.
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Science in the Bel Paese by Massimo Pinto
Italy has a serious scientific research excellence problem at home. Why there are so few foreign scientists in Italian Labs? Is the Italian academic job ladder closed to foreigners? Something new is happening, just may be, and I feel an urge to report it.
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Tales from (near) the quake
- Date:
- Thursday, 09 Apr il 2009 - 14:27 UTC
Last updated: Thursday, 09 Apr 2009 - 14:27 UTC
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Comments
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oh man, that is a scary experience.
also, I guess similar to what happened at the University of L’Aquila, in Sichuan province, China the death toll rose drastically b/c schools and dorms collapsed during a major quake in 2008. I remember feeling relief when I heard all my relatives there were safe. My granny was in the region the week before celebrating a class reunion at her alma mater, after she left the place was just reduced to rubble when the earth quake hit.
Glad to hear you’re OK- the collapse of relatively new buildings in this region that should have been designed to do better was a travesty. Glad to hear you and Marco are OK Massimo.