An earthquake kills at least 63 people and destroys more than 87,000 homes in Java, Indonesia
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
The 2009 West Java earthquake was a 7.0 magnitude earthquake that occurred on September 2, 2009 at 14:55 local time in West Java, Indonesia,which killed at least 63 people. Dozens are said to be missing.More than 87,000 homes have been destroyed.
The quake was felt in the capital Jakarta although damage there was minimal. Rescue efforts are underway to retrieve those trapped under landslides. It is Indonesia's deadliest earthquake since 2006.
The earthquake's focus lies close to the major fault plane where the Indo-Australian Plate is being subducted beneath the Eurasian Plate. However, the focal mechanisms determined for this event shows reverse faulting at a high angle to the trend of the subduction zone and it has been suggested that the cause was deformation within the descending slab. At least thirty-two people were initially reported to have been killed by the quake. Buildings in Bandung and Tasikmalaya, the town closest to the epicenter, were damaged, and hundreds of people were injured. An estimated 18,300 homes and offices were earlier thought to have been damaged. This figure later rose to 87,000+.
The quake was felt as far away as Jakarta, Indonesia's capital; causing evacuation in many office buildings and hotels.
At least 11 houses were covered by a landslide in Cianjur. Around 37 inhabitants, including 13 children, of Cikangkareng were affected by a landslide caused by the quake and are thought to have been buried beneath rubble. The area has become a breeding ground for voyeurs who are flocking to the area to take photographs of the destruction and victims. At least one hospital was destroyed by the quake. Confirmed death tolls by area were issued by The Jakarta Post on 4 September. in Cianjur 21 people a was killed while in Garut 10 were recorded and in Tasikmalaya 9. in Bandung 8 was killed while in Ciamis At least 1.in Sukabumi At least 1 while in Bogor At least 1. also in West Bandung At least 1
Residents fearful of aftershocks are staying indoors. 4.9 magnitude, on September 2, 2009, at 16:28 local time
Some roads were cleared on 4 September. Aid is also arriving at the affected areas.
The Bandung Health Agency says nearby victims of the quake will be eligible for free medical treatment for at least a month. Rescuers have been equipped with machinery but are struggling. 34 doctors and 52 paramedics have been sent to at least 12 districts. More than 25,000 affected people are being housed in makeshift tents.
AIR FRANCE PLANE FLIGHT 447 CRASH ON THE ATLANTIC CLAIMS 228
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Air France Flight 447 was a scheduled commercial flight from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris, that on 1 June 2009 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 216 passengers and 12 crew members.
The aircraft, an Air France Airbus A330-200 registered as F-GZCP, took off on 31 May 2009 at 19:03 local time (22:03 UTC). The last contact with the crew was a routine message to Brazilian air traffic controllers at 01:33 UTC, as the aircraft approached the edge of Brazilian radar surveillance over the Atlantic Ocean, en-route to Senegalese-controlled airspace off the coast of West Africa. Forty minutes later, a four-minute-long series of automatic radio messages was received from the plane, indicating numerous problems and warnings. The exact meanings of these messages are still under investigation, but the aircraft is believed to have been lost shortly after it sent the automated messages.
On 6 June 2009, a search and rescue operation recovered two bodies and debris from the aircraft floating in the ocean 680 mi (1,090 km) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast. The debris included a briefcase containing an airline ticket, later confirmed to have been issued for the flight. On 27 June the search for bodies and debris was called off, having recovered 51 bodies.
This accident is the deadliest in the history of Air France, surpassing the crash of an Air France charter flight from Paris-Orly Airport to Atlanta on 3 June 1962, and the airline's first fatal crash since the Concorde Flight 4590 in July 2000.Paul-Louis Arslanian, the head of the Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la Sécurité de l'Aviation Civile (BEA, Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety), described it as the worst accident in French aviation history. It is the second fatal accident involving the Airbus A330; the first A330 accident with fatalities was a test flight.
The investigation continues, but is severely hampered by the absence of the flight data recorders, lack of eyewitness accounts or radar tracks, and the BEA did not reach any definitive conclusion in its interim report published on 2 July 2009. 1 JuneApproximate flight path of AF 447. The solid red line shows the actual route. The dashed line indicates the planned route beginning with the position of the last transmission heard. All times are UTC.The aircraft departed from Rio de Janeiro-Galeão International Airport on 31 May 2009 at 19:03 local time (22:03 UTC), with a scheduled arrival at Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport approximately 11 hours later.
An Air France spokesperson stated on 3 June that “the aircraft sent a series of electronic messages over a three-minute period, which represented about a minute of information. Exactly what that data means hasn't been sorted out, yet.” An aviation safety expert explained a few days later that “complete failure would require 100% failure of the electrical system,” which “did not happen early in the flight, because the system was uplinking data to the maintenance facility, indicating there was some electricity on the airplane.”
The messages, sent from an onboard maintenance system, Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), were made public on 4 June 2009. These transcripts indicate that between 02:10 UTC and 02:14 UTC, 5 failure reports (FLR) and 19 warnings (WRN) were transmitted. The messages resulted from equipment failure data, captured by a built-in system for testing and reporting, and cockpit warnings also posted to ACARS. The failures and warnings in the 5 minutes of transmission concerned navigation auto-flight, flight controls, and cabin air-handling (codes beginning with 34, 22 , 37 and 21, respectively).
Among the ACARS transmissions in the first minute is one message that indicates a fault in the pitot-static system (code 34111506). Sources close to the investigation have confirmed that “the first automated system-failure message in a string of radio alerts from the crashed jet explicitly indicated that the airspeed sensors were faulty”. The twelve warning messages with the same time code indicate that the autopilot and auto-thrust system had disengaged, that the TCAS was in fault mode, and flight mode went from 'normal law' to 'alternate law'. The 02:10 transmission contained a set of coordinates which indicated at that the aircraft was at 2°59′N 30°35′W / 2.98°N 30.59°W / 2.98; -30.59.
The remainder of the messages occurred from 02:11 UTC to 02:14 UTC, containing a fault message for an Air Data Inertial Reference Unit (ADIRU) and the Integrated Standby Instrument System (ISIS). At 02:12 UTC, a warning message NAV ADR DISAGREE indicated that there was a disagreement between the independent air data systems (more precisely: that after one of the three independent systems had been diagnosed as faulty and excluded from consideration, the two remaining systems disagreed). At 02:13 UTC, a fault message for the flight management guidance and envelope computer was sent. One of the two final messages transmitted at 02:14 UTC was a warning referring to the air data reference system, the other ADVISORY (Code 213100206) was a "cabin vertical speed warning".
A meteorological analysis of the area surrounding the flight path showed a mesoscale convective system extending to an altitude of around 50,000 feet (15 km; 9.5 mi) above the Atlantic Ocean before Flight 447 disappeared. From satellite images taken near the time of the incident, it appears that the aircraft encountered a severe thunderstorm, likely containing severe turbulence.
Detailed analysis of the weather conditions for the flight shows it is possible that the aircraft's final 12 minutes could have been spent "flying through significant turbulence and thunderstorm activity for about 75 mi (121 km)", and may have been subjected to rime icing, and possibly clear ice or graupel. Satellite imagery loops from the CIMSS clarify that the flight was coping with a series of storms, not just one.
Commercial air transport crews routinely encounter this type of storm in this area. Generally, when storms of this type are encountered at night, pilots use onboard radar to navigate around them.
In this instance, shortly after the last verbal contact was made with Air Traffic Control about 350 mi (560 km) north-east of Natal, Brazil (station identifier SBNT), the aircraft likely traversed an area of intense deep convection which had formed within a broad band of thunderstorms along the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). Turbulence in the vicinity of these rapidly-developing storms may have contributed to the accident.According to news sources, 12 other flights shared more or less the same route that Flight 447 was using at the time of the accident.
Colonel Jorge Amaral, deputy head of the Aeronautical Communications Center of the Brazilian Air Force, discussing the search for the aircraft.On June 1 at 02:20 UTC, Brazilian air traffic controllers contacted air traffic control in Dakar after noticing that the plane had not made the required radio call signaling its crossing into Senegalese airspace.The Brazilian Air Force then began a search and rescue operation from the Brazilian archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, and at 19:00 UTC on 1 June, Spain sent a CASA 235 maritime patrol plane in search and rescue operations near Cape Verde. French reconnaissance planes were also dispatched, including one Breguet Atlantic from Dakar, and the French requested satellite equipment from the United States to help find the plane. Brazilian Air Force spokesperson Colonel Henry Munhoz told Brazilian TV that radar on Cape Verde failed to pick up the aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean.
Later on June 1, officials with Air France and the French government had already presumed that the plane had been lost with no survivors. An Air France spokesperson told L'Express that there was "no hope for survivors," and French President Nicolas Sarkozy told relatives of the passengers that there was only a minimal chance that anyone survived.
Also late on 1 June, the deputy chief of the Brazilian Aeronautical Communications Center, Jorge Amaral, confirmed that 30 minutes after the Air France Airbus had transmitted the automatic report, a commercial pilot had reported the sighting of "orange dots" in the middle of the Atlantic, which could indicate the glow of wreckage on fire. his sighting was reported by a TAM Airlines crew flying from Europe to Brazil, at approximately 1300 km (700 miles) from Fernando de Noronha. Another similar sighting of "something flashing brightly over the ocean then taking a descending vertical trajectory" was reported by the Spanish pilot of Air Comet Flight 974 flying from Lima to Madrid. The Brazilian newspaper O Globo reported that wreckage debris was discovered off the Senegalese coast, but that its origin was still uncertain. EarthTimes and news.com.au reported that the crew of the French freighter Douce France spotted debris floating on the ocean in the area earlier indicated by the TAM crew.
The crew of a Brazilian Air Force C-130 Hercules searches for wreckage from the Airbus A330 of Air France Flight 447, while flying at low level 650 km (350 miles) north of Fernando de Noronha islands. (3 June 2009)On 2 June at 15:20 (UTC), the Brazilian Air Force, using an Embraer R-99A Erieye, found wreckage and signs of oil, possibly jet fuel, strewn along a 5 km (3 mi) band 650 km (400 mi) north-east of Fernando de Noronha Island, near Saint Peter and Paul Rocks. Spotted wreckage included a plane seat, an orange buoy, a barrel, "white pieces and electrical conductors". Later that day, after meeting with relatives of the Brazilians on the aircraft, Brazilian Defence Minister Nelson Jobim announced that the Air Force believed the wreckage was from Flight 447. Brazilian vice-president José Alencar (acting as president since Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was out of the country) declared three days of official mourning.
Also on 2 June, two French Navy vessels, Foudre and Ventôse, were en route to the suspected crash site. In addition, other ships sent to the site included the French research vessel Pourquoi Pas?, equipped with two mini-submarines able to descend to 6,000 m (20,000 ft),since the area of the Atlantic in which the plane went down may be as deep as 4,700 m (15,000 ft). A United States Navy Lockheed Martin P-3 Orion anti-submarine warfare and maritime patrol aircraft was also deployed in the search due to its low altitude endurance, patrol capability, search and rescue sonobuoys and magnetic anomaly detector (MAD) sensor suite.
On 3 June, the first Brazilian Navy ship, the patrol boat Grajaú, reached the area in which the first debris was spotted. The Brazilian Navy has sent a total of five ships to the debris site; the frigate Constituição and the corvette Caboclo were scheduled to reach the area on 4 June, the frigate Bosísio on 6 June and the replenishment oiler Almirante Gastão Motta on 7 June.
On 5 June, French defence minister Hervé Morin announced that the nuclear submarine Émeraude was being sent to the area, to assist in the search for the missing flight recorders or "black-boxes" which might be located at great depth. The submarine would use its sonar to listen for the ultra-sonic signal emitted by the black boxes' "pingers". On 10 June, the Émeraude reached the crash zone of Air France Flight 447 with plans to troll 13 sq mi (34 km2) a day, listening for the pingers. The Émeraude was to work with the mini-sub Nautile, which can descend to the ocean floor and was a key part of the search for the RMS Titanic. The French submarines would be aided by two U.S. underwater audio devices, capable of picking up signals even at a depth of 20,000 ft (6,100 m).
Colour bathymetry relief map of the part of Atlantic Ocean into which Air France Flight 447 crashed. Image shows two different data sets with different resolution.
FLOODING KILLS AT LEAST 66 IN VIETNAM AS LANDSLIDES KILLS 26 IN PHILIPINES
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
HANOI, Vietnam - The death toll from nearly a week of flooding across northern and central Vietnam stood at 66 Monday and parts of the capital remained under water, but rains were easing and floodwaters receding in many areas.
Hanoi alone recorded 18 deaths since heavy rains started lashing the city Friday, authorities said. Elsewhere 48 deaths have been reported, authorities said.
Rains were expected in Hanoi and some northern provinces Monday and Tuesday, but weather forecasters said they would be lighter than the downpours that soaked the capital over the weekend.
That would provide welcome relief to residents of Hanoi, where many streets were under three feet (a meter) of water and scores of businesses remained shuttered.
"I have been stuck in my house for the past three days," said Nguyen Manh Hung, a businessman who lives on a street in southern Hanoi where water reached his waist. "It's unbelievable to see people navigating the street in boats and by horse-drawn carriages."
Vietnamese television on Sunday night quoted Hanoi Mayor Nguyen The Thao as saying it would take the city four or five days to pump excess water into the Red River — longer if heavy rains resume.
More than 20 inches (500 millimeters) of rain have fallen on the city in the past three days, the heaviest rains in more than two decades.
Authorities reported six deaths in the northern provinces of Vinh Phuc, Bac Giang and Thai Nguyen on Monday.
The central Nghe An province became worst-hit after 10 more bodies were recovered Monday, bringing the death toll there to 22, said provincial disaster official Nguyen Dinh Thuy.
Rains continued to fall in the province, preventing rescue workers from accessing affected areas, Thuy said.
"Water is everywhere. Many parts of the province are still isolated," said Thuy. "We have to use motorboats to rush food aid to villagers, who have been in hunger for several days."
Floods have inundated more than 100,000 homes across northern and central Vietnam, the national committee for flood and storm control said on its Web site.
More than 590,000 acres (240,000 hectares) of rice and vegetables have been destroyed and about 100 miles (170 kilometers) of rural roads damaged, it said.
MANILA, Philippines - Mudslides tumbled down a rain-soaked mountain in the southern Philippines, burying dozens of shanties in a gold mining village and killing at least 26 people, a provincial governor said Tuesday.
A 50-member police and military rescue team headed to the remote village of Napnapan to help search for at least six people missing a day after the landslides hit, said Gov. Arthur Uy of Compostela Valley province.
The village, which normally has no police presence, is about 64 miles (40 kilometers) from the nearest main town and the rescuers brought a back hoe and other heavy equipment to clear the only road leading to it, police Inspector Winifredo Regidor said. One mudslide slammed into about 30 shanties, followed by another that swept away a house, Uy told The Associated Press by telephone.
About 19 people, most of them miners, were treated for injuries, Uy said. Three of them were airlifted in an air force helicopter that brought in a medical team, police said.
Residents ignored warnings The landslide-prone area was saturated after days of rain and residents had ignored warnings to leave, Uy said.
"We have been asking them to leave, and we are planning to cordon the area," Uy said. "We are happy to have this gold mining area here. But the dark side are the deaths that occur in these natural calamities."
The area around Mount Diwata — about 580 miles southeast of Manila — has about 40,000 residents, mostly miners and their families.
Forecasters said additional rain over the southern Philippines could trigger more flooding and landslides.
The 2009 outbreak of Influenza A virus subtype H1N1 is an epidemic of a new strain of influenza virus identified in April 2009, commonly referred to as "swine flu" by the media. The source of the outbreak in humans is still unknown. Cases were first discovered in the U.S. and officials soon suspected a link between those incidents and an earlier outbreak of late-season flu cases in Mexico. Within days hundreds of suspected cases, some of them fatal, were discovered in Mexico, with yet more cases found in the U.S. and several other countries in the Northern Hemisphere. Soon thereafter, the U.N.'s World Health Organization (WHO), along with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), expressed concern that the A(H1N1) could become a worldwide flu pandemic, and WHO then raised its pandemic disease alert level to "Phase 5" out of the six maximum, as a "signal that a pandemic is at the imminent level".
Although virologists have noted that the outbreak has proven relatively mild and less fatal than historic pandemics, other health officials, including CDC Director Richard Besser, worry about what might happen later in the year, stating that "we are not seeing any sign of this petering out. We are still on the upswing of the epidemic curve. The number of cases is expected to rise as the new flu spreads across the country." In addition, the new virus strain could mutate over the coming months, leading to a new and potentially more dangerous flu outbreak later in the year.
The new strain is an apparent reassortment of four strains of influenza A virus subtype H1N1.Analysis by the CDC identified the four component strains as one endemic in humans, one endemic in birds, and two endemic in pigs (swine).However, other scientists have stated that analysis of the 2009 swine flu (A/H1N1) viral genome suggests that all RNA segments are of swine origin, and "this preliminary analysis suggests at least two swine ancestors to the current H1N1, one of them related to the triple reassortant viruses isolated in North America in 1998." One swine influenza ancestor strain was widespread in the United States, the other in Eurasia. Both the place and the species in which the virus originated are unknown. Analysis has suggested that the H1N1 strain responsible for the current outbreak first evolved around September 2008 and circulated in the human population for several months before the first cases were detected. The new strain was first diagnosed in two children by the CDC, first on April 14 in San Diego County, California and a few days later in nearby Imperial County, California. Neither child had been in contact with pigs. Spread within Mexico Further information: 2009 swine flu outbreak in Mexico The outbreak was first detected in Mexico City, where surveillance began picking up a surge in cases of influenza-like illness (ILI) starting March 18. The surge was assumed by Mexican authorities to be "late-season flu" (which usually coincides with a mild Influenzavirus B peak) until April 21, when a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention alert concerning two isolated cases of a novel swine flu was reported in the media. Some samples were sent to the U.S.-based CDC on April 18. The Mexican cases were confirmed by the CDC and the World Health Organization to be a new strain of H1N1. Cases were also reported in the states of San Luis Potosí, Hidalgo, Querétaro and Mexico State.Mexican Health Minister José Ángel Córdova on April 24, said "We’re dealing with a new flu virus that constitutes a respiratory epidemic that so far is controllable." Mexican news media speculate that the outbreak may have started in February near a Smithfield Foods pig plant amid complaints about its intensive farming practices, although no pigs in Mexico have tested positive for the virus. Smithfield Foods retorted that that it had found no clinical signs or symptoms of the presence of swine influenza in the company's swine herd, or its employees at its joint ventures in Mexico, and routinely administers influenza virus vaccination to their swine herds and that it conducts monthly testing for the presence of swine influenza. The first death from swine flu occurred on April 13, when a diabetic woman from Oaxaca died from respiratory complications. The Mexican fatalities are alleged to be mainly young adults of 25 to 45, a common trait of pandemic flu. Although by late April there had been reports of 152 "probable deaths" in Mexico, the WHO had received reports of only 7 confirmed deaths as of April 29 and explicitly denied the larger figure. Later, Mexico's Health Secretary declared that around 100 early suspected deaths from swine flu could not be confirmed because samples were not taken.The WHO Rapid Pandemic Assessment Collaboration has estimated that 23,000 individuals may have been infected in Mexico in 14 to 73 generations of flu propagation prior to late April. Southern Hemisphere The outbreak comes at the beginning of the flu season for the Southern Hemisphere, including Australia, Oceania, southern Africa, and most of South America. July is usually the height of flu season in this part of the world.In a May 18th article, CDC’s Dr. Richard Besser was quoted as saying in reference to the Southern Hemisphere: “We’ll be looking at the virus to see [if it] has mutated into something more severe.”
The new strain has spread widely beyond Mexico and the U.S., with confirmed cases in forty-one countries and suspected cases in fifty. Many countries have advised their inhabitants not to travel to infected areas. Areas including Australia, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand are monitoring visitors returning from flu-affected areas to identify people with fever and respiratory symptoms. Many countries have also issued warnings to visitors of flu-affected areas to contact a doctor immediately if they had flu-like symptoms. Mexico's schools, universities, and all public events were closed from April 24 to May 6, 2009. By May 3, 2009, more than 400 school closures in the U.S., which included entire school districts in Texas, affected 250,000 students due to confirmed or probable cases in students or staff. Most cases outside North America are recent travellers to Mexico or the US. Intra-national infections have been reported only from Mexico, the USA, Canada,the UK,Spain, Germany,Italy, Belgium and Panama.
Although the FAO, WHO, and OIE have reaffirmed that "Influenza viruses are not known to be transmissible to people through eating processed pork or other food products derived from pigs," and although influenza A viruses are inactivated by heating, nevertheless some countries banned import and sale of pork products "as a precaution against swine flu".
Several countries, including Serbia, China and Russia banned the import of pork products from North America in general as a response to the outbreak, despite assurances from the WHO that the disease is not spread through pork. On April 29, the Egyptian Government decided to kill all 300,000 pigs in Egypt, despite a lack of evidence that the pigs had, or were even suspected of having, the virus.This led to clashes between pig owners and the police in Cairo.On May 5, Afghanistan's only pig, which resides at the Kabul zoo, was quarantined amid flu fears. On May 10, in Alberta, Canada, 500 pigs were culled on a farm which housed pigs confirmed to have H1N1. Authorities state it was to better quarantine those pigs that had H1N1, and maintain that the culling was not a direct action against the virus. In Alberta, Canada, provincial and federal officials announced on May 2 that a 2,200-head pig herd in central Alberta was under quarantine after preliminary findings indicated some of the animals were infected with swine flu in a case of reverse zoonosis; it was presumed that a carpenter who had recently visited Mexico infected the swine while installing a roof vent on their barn. The farm was quarantined and 500 infected pigs were destroyed even though they were recovering.Alberta agriculture minister George Groeneveld said that health officials expected no problems with export of pork from Canada to the United States, and that there was "absolutely no evidence" that the flu virus can be transmitted through eating pork.
6 CAR BOMBINGS KILLS 17 AS L'AQUILA EARTHQUAKE KILLS 250
The 6 April 2009 Baghdad bombings were six car bombings across the Iraqi captial of Baghdad, though it was not known if the attacks were a result of coordination and planning or merely coincedence.
The attacks came a week after Iraqi forces putting down an uprising by members of an Awakening Council angry over the arrest of their commander.
Despite a seeming decline in violence since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the capability of many armed groups to strike with deadly results still exists. Though the government insists it is only detaining those wanted for grave crimes, certain fighters -- many of them former insurgents -- see it as settling sectarian scores. To this end some 250 Iraqis were killed in violent attacks in the month of March Attack The bombings in the Shia neighbourhood of Sadr City had at least 10 deaths and 60 other injuries. In the central Allawi district, another explosion killed four people and wounded 15 others. A car bomb targeted the convoy of a senior interior ministry official resulting in one one civilian death and another policeman dead while four policemen were injured in a southeastern neighbourhood of New Baghdad. A vehicle explosion near a market in the district of Hussainiya resulted in two other deaths and 12 others wounded. Another car bomb near the Doura district, killed four people and injured 15 more.
The 2009 L'Aquila earthquake was an earthquake of 6.3 moment magnitude that occurred in the central Italian region of Abruzzo on 6 April 2009, following a series of about a hundred minor tremors since January 2009, including a 4.0-magnitude one on 30 March. The majority of the damage occurred in the medieval city of L'Aquila (capital city of the Abruzzo region) and the surrounding villages. 297 people are known to have died, making this the deadliest earthquake to hit Italy since the 1980 Irpinia earthquake. This earthquake was caused by movement on a NW-SE trending normal fault according to moment tensor solutions.Although Italy lies in a tectonically complex region, the central part of the Appenines has been characterised by extensional tectonics since the Pliocene epoch (i.e. about the last 5 million years), with most of the active faults being normal in type and NW-SE trending. The extension is due to the back-arc basin in the Tyrrhenian Sea opening faster than the African Plate is colliding with the Eurasian Plate. The earthquake occurred at 01:32 GMT (03:32 CEST local time) at the relatively shallow depth of 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) and with an epicentre at 42.423°N, 13.395°E or approximately 90 kilometres (60 mi) north-east of Rome, at the village of Paganica near to the city of L'Aquila. The earthquake was reported to measure 6.3 on the moment magnitude scale. Italy frequently experiences earthquakes but it is uncommon for them to be very deadly. The last major earthquake was the 5.9 magnitude 2002 Molise earthquake which killed more than 25 people and was the deadliest in 20 years. Earthquakes mark the history of L'Aquila, a city built on the bed of an ancient lake, providing a soil structure that amplifies seismic waves. The city was struck by earthquakes in 1315, 1349, 1452, 1501, 1646, 1703, and 1706. The earthquake of February 1703, which caused devastation across much of central Italy, largely destroyed the city and killed around 5,000 people. The earthquake caused damage to between 3,000 and 11,000 buildings in the medieval city of L'Aquila. Several buildings also collapsed. 297 people were killed by the earthquake, including two Czechs, five Romanian citizens, two Palestinians, one Greek citizen, one French citizen, one Ukrainian citizen and one Israeli citizen, and approximately 1,000 people were injured. Only 20 of the victims were children.Around 66,000 people were made homeless. The main earthquake was preceded by two smaller earthquakes the previous day. The earthquake was felt as far away as Rome (92 kilometres (57 mi) away), in other parts of Lazio, as well as Marche, Molise, Umbria and Campania. Schools remained closed in the Abruzzo region. Most of the inhabitants of L'Aquila abandoned their homes and the city itself; in the city centre of L'Aquila, and the nearby village of Paganica which was also badly damaged, many streets were impassable due to fallen masonry. The hospital at L'Aquila, where many of the victims were brought, suffered damage in the 4.8 aftershock which followed the main earthquake an hour later. Powerful aftershocks, some only slightly weaker than the main shock, were felt throughout the following 2 days. Villages in the valley along Strada Statale 17 just outside l'Aquila suffered the greatest damage while medieval mountain hill towns lying high above the valley suffered little damage. Onna was reported to be mostly leveled with 38 deaths among the 350 residents. The villages of Villa Sant'Angelo and San Pio delle Camere were badly damaged. Fatalities were reported in Poggio Picenze, Tornimparte, Fossa, Totani and San Pio delle Camere. Many of L'Aquila's medieval buildings have been damaged. The apse of the Basilica of Saint Bernardino of Siena, L'Aquila's largest Renaissance church was seriously damaged, and its campanile has collapsed. Almost the whole dome of the 18th-century church of Anime Sante in Piazza Duomo has fallen down. The 13th-century Basilica di Santa Maria di Collemaggio collapsed from the transept to the back of the church and Porta Napoli, the oldest gate to the city, was destroyed in the quake. The third floor of Forte Spagnolo, the 16th-century castle housing the National Museum of Abruzzo, has collapsed, as has the cupola of the 18th-century Baroque church of St Augustine, damaging L'Aquila's state archives. This church was rebuilt after it was destroyed in the 1703 earthquake. The Cathedral of L'Aquila has lost part of its transept and maybe more with the effects of the aftershocks. Slight damage was also reported to the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, but other Roman monuments such as the Colosseum and Roman Forum were unharmed. The damaged Santa Maria Church in the town of PaganicaWhile most of l'Aquila's medieval structures suffered damage, many of its modern buildings suffered the greatest damage, for instance, a dormitory at the university of l'Aquila collapsed. Even some buildings that were believed to be "earthquake-proof" were damaged. L’Aquila Hospital's new wing, which opened in 2000 and was thought capable of resisting almost any earthquake suffered extensive damage and had to be closed. Around 40,000 people who were made homeless by the earthquake found accommodation in tented camps and a further 10,000 were housed in hotels on the coast. Others sought shelter with friends and relatives throughout Italy. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi caused a controversy when he said, in an interview to the German station n-tv, that the homeless victims should consider themselves to be on a "camping weekend" - "They have everything they need, they have medical care, hot food... Of course, their current lodgings are a bit temporary. But they should see it like a weekend of camping."To clarify his thought, he also told the people in a homeless camp: "Head to the beach. It’s Easter. Take a break. We’re paying for it, you’ll be well looked after." The billionaire prime minister offered his own houses to some of the survivors. Poor building standards or construction materials seem to have further contributed to the large number of victims. According to firefighters and other rescuers, some concrete elements of the fallen buildings "seemed to have been made poorly, possibly with sand". An official at Italy's Civil Protection agency, Franco Barberi, said that "in California, an earthquake like this one would not have killed a single person." According to Italian media, L'Aquila's chief prosecutor has opened a probe into possible criminal blame for the collapses. Wikinews has related news: 5.6-magnitude aftershock earthquake strikes Italy The epicentral region saw dozens of significant aftershocks following the main earthquake. The strongest, which hit on 7 April at 19:47 CEST local time measured magnitude 5.3 ML and caused further damage. According to the Italian National Geophysics Institute director Boschi, the aftershock epicentres have migrated south-east, thus lessening the risk of other major shocks that are near to populated areas.
Aftershocks cause safety issues for rescue crews with cranes and backhoes who are searching for injured people among precarious loose bricks and broken timbers of structures in the historic center of L'Aquila, a medieval city. Even a small aftershock can trigger the collapse of seriously damaged walls or parapets. Aftershocks also cause sustained psychological trauma to small children and elderly who have already been traumatized by the main earthquake of 6 April 2009. The Italian government is aware of this psychological trauma situation, and therefore has temporarily relocated thousands of citizens away from the epicentral area.
Within two weeks, it is expected that both the rate and magnitude of aftershocks will decay. During April and May 2009, seismologists will study the full extent of the oval-shaped fault-rupture surface, as illuminated by the sequence of aftershocks, and then make a final determination of the "official" moment magnitude.
As a result of aftershocks, the dome of the Anime Sante Basilica in L'Aquila, already heavily damaged by the main shock, has almost entirely collapsed. Further buildings have collapsed in L'Aquila and in neighbouring boroughs. The aftershock was so strong as to be felt in Rome, where it caused an elderly man to die of cardiac arrest. Only shocks with magnitude 4.0 or higher are listed. There have been dozens of small magnitude aftershocks, Mw 1-3, but these generally do not cause further structural damage. Shocks with magnitude 5.0 or higher are highlighted in light blue. The main shock with moment magnitude 6.3 Mw is highlighted in dark blue. Earthquake magnitude symbols: Mw = moment magnitude scale; mb = body wave magnitude; ML = local magnitude, also known as the Richter magnitude scale. Emergency personnel review damaged buildingsMany Italian companies have offered some sort of help. All Italian mobile companies (Telecom Italia Mobile, Vodafone Italy, WIND (Italy),[citation needed] H3G[citation needed]) as well as some Mobile virtual network operators, sent free minutes and credit to all their pre-paid customers in Abruzzo, suspended billing to all post-paid customers and extended their coverage with additional mobile base stations to cover homeless camps. In addition, some companies sent free mobile phones, SIM Cards and chargers for those who lost their mobiles, and set up a national unique number to send donations to, by placing a call or sending an SMS. Poste Italiane sent to homeless camps some mobile units acting as Postal Office, to allow people to withdraw money from their accounts as well as their retirement. Many companies, such as pay-tv SKY Italia, suspended billing to all customers in Abruzzo, and offered some decoders to homeless camps to allow them to follow the funerals and the news. Ferrovie dello Stato offered its railway sleeping carriage to host some homeless people, and offered free tickets to all people and students living in Abruzzo. AISCAT (Associazione Italiana Società Concessionarie Autostrade e Trafori) declared that all toll-road in Abruzzo will be free of charge. All tax billing for all Abruzzo residents have been suspended by the government, as well as mortgage payments. Italian laboratory technician Giampaolo Giuliani predicted a major earthquake on Italian television a month before, after measuring increased levels of radon emitted from the ground. He was accused of being alarmist by Director of the Civil Defence Guido Bertolaso, and forced to remove his findings from the Internet (old data and descriptions are still on line. He was also reported to police a week before the main quake for "causing fear" among the local population when he predicted an earthquake was imminent in Sulmona, about 50 km (31 mi) from L'Aquila, on 30 March where a 4° quake happened (later Sulmona only suffered minor damages by the 6 April earthquake. Enzo Boschi, the head of the Italian National Geophysics Institute declared: "Every time there is an earthquake there are people who claim to have predicted it. As far as I know nobody predicted this earthquake with precision. It is not possible to predict earthquakes." Predicting earthquakes based on radon emissions has been studied by scientists since the 1970s, but enthusiasm for it has faded due to inconsistent results.
