On the 6th April, Monday, 2009 around 3.32am local time, an Earthquake with a 6.3 magnitude struck L’Aquila, a city in Italy. Even the peoples in Tempera, a few kilometers east of L’Aquila have been affected. Every house in that historic village centre had been destroyed. And it could also be felt at Rome, 60 miles to the west.
This earthquake was triggered by a slippage in a fault line that runs north-south beneath the Apennine Mountains. The tectonic movement is slowly pulling the crust and the Apennine mountain range apart. The movement of the second microplate beneath the Adriatic sea, at the country east coast might have also contributed to the earthquake that happened
The officials reported that this earthquake had caused as many as 179 people to die, 1 500 injured and 15 000 to be left homeless. Many of the Historic buildings were also seriously destroyed by this quake. A 18th –century church had cracked open like an eggshell causing the stucco patterns inside it to be exposed. The once lively L’Aquila has now been left in a state of chaos, buildings reduced into rubbles.
Silvio Berlusconi, Italy prime minister, planned to seek assistance from an EU fund for disaster relief, he had also dispatched 5 000 addition rescue workers from neighboring towns to help in the rescuing. I think we should learn on some life saving skills like hiding under the tables or knowing that we should not take the lifts instead use the stairs etc. when facing this type of disaster. The scientists could also place some sensor machines to sense for the earthquake so that the authorities would have prepared before hand for the up-coming earthquake. This could save a lot of people lives.
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Bibliography
Website
John Hooper and Peter Walker, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/06/italy-earthquake-laquila
Christine Oliver, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2009/apr/06/italy-earthquake
