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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIn Italy, scientists are now being tried for manslaughter for failing to predict 2009 earthquake.
The trial is ongoing, with the scientists and engineers currently testifying in their own defense. The trial will break for the summer and resume in the fall.
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/05/earthquake-experts-finally-testi.html
While Italians yesterday were coming to terms with a lethal earthquake that struck near the northern city of Modena the day before, killing at least 17 people, residents of L'Aquila a few hundred kilometers to the south were again focused on the devastating quake they experienced 3 years earlier. That event, which killed 308 people, has led to the trial of seven scientists and engineers on charges of manslaughter for allegedly giving a false sense of security to people in the area ahead of the quake. Yesterday, 8 months after the trial began, all of the indicted took to the witness stand for the first time, offering a variety of defenses in response to the prosecution's questioning.
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http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/05/italian-scientists-to-stand-trial.html
ROMEEnzo Boschi, the president of Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), will face trial on charges of manslaughter with six other scientists and technicians for failing to alert the residents of L'Aquila ahead of the devastating earthquake that struck the central Italian town on 6 April 2009, killing 308 people.
The seven experts sit on the nation's major risks committee, and were probed by L'Aquila prosecutors after members of the public complained that it was the committee's reassurances that persuaded them not to leave their homes ahead of the quake.
In addition to Boschi, those facing trial are: Franco Barberi, committee vice president; Bernardo De Bernardinis, at the time vice president of Italy's Civil Protection Department and now president of the country's Institute for Environmental Protection and Research; Giulio Selvaggi, director of the National Earthquake Centre; Gian Michele Calvi, director of the European Centre for Training and Research in Earthquake Engineering; Claudio Eva, an earth scientist at the University of Genoa; and Mauro Dolce, director of the office of seismic risk at the Civil Protection Department.
The seven were placed under investigation almost a year ago, and today L'Aquila Judge Giuseppe Romano Gargarella announced that they will be tried. According to the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Gargarella said that the seven defendants had supplied "imprecise, incomplete and contradictory information," in a press conference following a meeting held by the committee 6 days before the quake. In doing so, they "thwarted the activities designed to protect the public," the judge said.
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digonswine
(1,485 posts)God looks on with his famous shit-eating grin.
JonLP24
(29,322 posts)msongs
(67,441 posts)RC
(25,592 posts)RKP5637
(67,112 posts)at the top responsible for the F'ups
pnwmom
(108,994 posts)which does not yet, as we all know, have the ability to predict earthquakes.
Speck Tater
(10,618 posts)RKP5637
(67,112 posts)of earthquake predicting. Ignorance makes for a really F'd up world.
3waygeek
(2,034 posts)for not providing sufficient quantities of sheep's bladders to prevent the quake.