Free Briefing on Abruzzo, Italy (L'Aquila) Earthquake

PG&E Auditorium • 77 Beale Street • San Francisco, CA 94177

EERI's Learning from Earthquakes Program presents a 2-hour briefing on Thursday, June 4, 2009, from members of the EERI/GEER/ATC/PEER Reconnaissance team. Come learn from experts recently returned from Italy!

The briefing will take place from 4 pm to 6 pm; refreshments will be provided. To pre-register, simply contact Juliane at EERI .  PG&E requires names and photo IDs for security purposes, so preregistration is a must. This event is co-sponsored by ATC, GEER, PEER, and PG&E.

On Monday, April 6, 2009, at 3:32am local time, a moment magnitude (Mw) 6.3 earthquake with shallow focal depth (10 km) struck central Italy in the vicinity of L'Aquila (founded in 1245), a city of about 70,000 people, which is the capital of the Abruzzo region. The earthquake killed 305 people, injured 1,500, destroyed or damaged an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 buildings, prompted the temporary evacuation of 70,000 to 80,000 residents, and left more than 24,000 homeless.  Although the geographic extent of significant damage was limited, the earthquake was felt as far north as Bologna and as far south as Napoli, and to the southwest in Rome, where a few old houses were also slightly damaged. This event was the strongest of a sequence that started a few months earlier. Many of the region's cultural sites were badly damaged or destroyed, including Romanesque churches, palazzi, and other monuments dating from the Middle Ages and Renaissance era. The historic centers of villages in the Aterno river valley southwest of L'Aquila, such as Onna, Paganica and Castelnuovo, were essentially obliterated (intensity up to X MCS).

• Paolo Bazzurro, Team Leader, AIR Worldwide
• Jon Stewart, GEER Team Leader, UCLA
• Mary Comerio, UC Berkeley
• John Price, ATC and Curry Price Court
• Marko Schotanus, Rutherford and Chekene

The EERI Learning from Earthquakes Program is funded by the National Science Foundation under grant #CMMI-0758529.