Italy Orders Jail Terms for 7 Who Didn't Warn of Deadly Earthquake - New York Times [getdailynow.blogspot.com]
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ROME â€" Seven prominent Italian earthquake experts were convicted of manslaughter on Monday and sentenced to six years for failing to give adequate warning to the residents of a seismically active area in the months preceding a fatal earthquake that killed more than 300 people.
Speaking in a hushed courtroom in L’Aquila, the city whose historic center was gutted by the earthquake, the judge, Marco Billi, read a long list of names of those who died or were injured in the disaster before he handed down the sentences to six scientists and a government official. The defendants, who said they would appeal the decision, will also have to pay court costs and damages of $ 10.2 million, and are banned from pursuing public office.
The seven, most of them prominent seismologists and geologists, were members of a National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks, which met shortly before the quake struck but did not issue a safety warning, even after a period of heightened seismic activity in the area.
The decision jolted the international scientific community, which feared it might open the way to an onslaught of lawsuits against scientists who evaluate the risks of natural phenomena, particularly if a discipline with as spotty a record as earthquake prediction could be found liable.
“This is the death of public service on the part of professors and professionals,†Luciano Maiani, the current president of the risk commission, told the news agency Ansa after the verdict. The legal and media pressure sparked by the trial have made it impossible to carry out professional consultancies for the state, he said, adding: “This doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world.â€
Lawyers for the defendants were unanimous Monday in their condemnation of the sentence, which exceeded the prosecution request of four years in prison, and vowed to appeal.
“I wasn’t expecting this,†said Alfredo Biondi, one of the defense lawyers. He described the ruling as one of the most erroneous from a legal point of view that he had encountered in his long career.
“This was a trial that should not have been held in L’Aquila†because the emotional impact of the quake is still felt so strongly in the city, added Filippo Dinacci, who represents two of the defendants. Mr. Dinacci said he wanted to read the judge’s full opinion, which must be filed within 90 days of the verdict, before making a statement, but he acknowledged feeling “perplexed.†“I doubt that in the United States one would go on trial for not adequately communicating a natural event,†he said.
More than three years after the earthquake, L’Aquila still has not recovered fully. Its architecturally rich center is still largely abandoned, and residents are still mourning the dead. There are some sporadic signs of reconstruction around the center, mostly rebuilt after a 1703 earthquake, including the inauguration last month of an auditorium designed by Renzo Piano, but the overall mood in the city speaks more of discouragement and dismay.
The city and surrounding towns were felled by an earthquake measuring 6.3 in the early hours of April 6, 2009, leaving thousands homeless and killing 309, many of them in their sleep.
Six days before the quake, the major risks commission met to assess the situation after a period of intense seismic activity in the area. After the meeting, some commission members gave encouraging statements to the news media, which prosecutors said gave residents an overly reassuring picture of the risks they faced. The commission, prosecutors charge, did not uphold their mandate and consequently did not allow the population to make informed decisions about whether to stay or leave their homes.
In his closing arguments on Monday morning the prosecutor, Fabio Picuti, cited a United States court ruling that had blamed the Army Corps of Engineers for “monumental negligence†for some of the flooding from Hurricane Katrina, the news agency Ansa reported. That case, Mr. Picuti said, demonstrates that it is possible to fall short of preventing and predicting a risk, according to Ansa.
Among those convicted Monday was Enzo Boschi, former head of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology.
“I am crestfallen, desperate. I thought I would be absolved,†he told Ansa. “I still don’t understand what I’ve been accused of.â€
Relatives of the victims cheered the decision. “It’s just a tiny bit of justice so that it doesn’t happen again,†sobbed one unidentified middle-aged blond woman on Sky Television.
“It is a very harsh sentence that condemns the superficial way in which the commission operated and approached the earthquake at the time,†said Fabio Alessandroni, a civil lawyer who represents the relatives of more than a dozen victims. “It is exemplary because it focuses the attention on the institutions. Citizens have to be able to trust institutions, and the institutions have to be credible and have to do their duty.â€
The court did not rule on whether or not earthquakes can be predicted. But Mr. Alessandroni said the sentence showed that it is possible to have a “culture of prevention. “It is possible to predict a risk and to adopt measures that mitigate that risk. It’s what the commission is supposed to do,†taking various elements, like a city’s seismic history into account. “And this was not done in L’Aquila.â€
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