mereHope

On April 5, 2009, Giampaolo Giuliani, a researcher attached to Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics, announced that an earthquake was imminent.  Emissions of higher than usual amounts of radon gas detected at four meters he had placed around his hometown of L’Aquila convinced him that an earthquake of at least a 4.0 magnitude would occur within 48 hours.  Naturally he began warning the people of L’Aquila through the Internet.  Authorities decided he was a contentious crackpot causing unnecessary panic, so they placed him under an injunction that prevented him from issuing public alerts.  Authorities even removed notices he posted on the Internet and threatened him with imprisonment if he reposted or made public announcements.  Restricted in what he could do, Giuliani went house-to-house warning neighbors, friends and family.  Once night came, he, with his immediate family, went to bed fully dressed, prepared to escape the anticipated earthquake and to help those who would survive.  Just before daylight he awoke to a series of violent quakes that were not a 4.0 magnitude but 7.0.  By the end of the day, a total of 308 people had died and 80,000 were left without shelter.[i]

To the inhabitants of L’Aquila, life had appeared stable and safe, calm and certain, and yet forces in the depths of the earth were shifting in opposing directions and tension that had been building for some time suddenly erupted into a massive earthquake.  Surely they thought, ‘How could such a cataclysmic event happen in our town?’ (more…)