Italian disasters

As could have been readily predicted, Italian scientists on their disaster body are quitting. That was an easier prediction than earthquakes.

An Italian court had found the six scientists and government official guilty of manslaughter for saying there was little risk.

The devil is in the details. The situation was that there'd been some minor quakes, and an amateur whose earlier predictions had all failed had managed to get attention and was warning everybody that disaster was at hand. By tradition people lived outdoors for a while to avoid aftershocks or the big tremor the small ones were leading up to. The panel assessed the risks and found them small, and apparently insisted on this extra hard because of the amateur. Some people who usually camped in the streets at such times decided to stay home, and got crushed when the quake hit after all.

Nature reports in considerable detail, and describes the famous evaluation meeting. Even Boschi now says that "the point of the meeting was to calm the population. We [scientists] didn't understand that until later on."

In press interviews before and after the meeting that were broadcast on Italian television, immortalized on YouTube and form detailed parts of the prosecution case, De Bernardinis said that the seismic situation in L'Aquila was "certainly normal" and posed "no danger", adding that "the scientific community continues to assure me that, to the contrary, it's a favourable situation because of the continuous discharge of energy". When prompted by a journalist who said, "So we should have a nice glass of wine," De Bernardinis replied "Absolutely", and urged locals to have a glass of Montepulciano.

and

Two of the committee members — Selvaggi and Eva — later told prosecutors that they "strongly dissented" from such an assertion, and Jordan later characterized it as "not a correct view of things". (De Bernardinis declined a request for an interview through his lawyer, Dinacci, who insisted that De Bernardinis's public comments reflected only what the commission scientists had told him. There is no mention of the discharge idea in the official minutes, Picuti says, and several of the indicted scientists point out that De Bernardinis made these remarks before the actual meeting.)

It sounds to me as though scapegoats were sought. And found. And convicted. There's an automatic appeal, but at this point I would not offer the Italian government my expert opinion on the time of day. Too risky.