Opinion: Extending the Usefulness of Seismic Hazard Studies

Abstract

On 12 January 2010, an M ≈ 7.0 earthquake hit Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, killing more than 200,000 people and resulting in one of the deadliest earthquakes in history. Since Haiti is among the poorest countries in the world, this catastrophe was easily traced to the inadequate building quality and the absence of modern geophysical institutions capable of assisting an equally modern civil protection organization. This view appears naive and, at least in part, wrong. On 6 April 2009, an M ≈ 6 earthquake brought heavy destruction to the city of l'Aquila, central Italy, and its surroundings, with a death toll of 308. Quite fortunately, the disaster was in this case much smaller, but not because Italy is among the elite G8 group of nations, nor because it has a long tradition in seismology, including a number of renowned universities and the richly funded Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica and Vulcanologia, which runs a technologically advanced nationwide seismic network. Nor was it because Italy has a uniquely efficient Dipartimento di Protezione Civile, capable of flawlessly accommodating the invasion—peaceful but monstrous in size—of 4 million people in Rome at the funeral of Pope John Paul II in 2005. No, the reason that the l'Aquila earthquake resulted in a lesser catastrophe than Port-au-Prince's is essentially because a smaller earthquake hit an area with fewer inhabitants. In fact, as is true of any other destructive earthquake, both events shook the scientific community no less than the ground, dramatically reviving the words of Ari Ben-Menahem (1995): “1992 14 April. Unpredicted earthquake of magnitude 6 in the heart of Europe, amidst hundreds of seismographs, computers, and professors of seismology. Just another reminder that …