Earthquake

Today an earthquake of 6.3 hit Italy. The city that was most affected is L'Aquila near Rome. There are already 30 confirmed deaths and a lot of destroyed houses in the city and destroyed villages near the city. It is believed that around 50 thousands people will remain without a house.
Hopefully I live far away from the epicenter and I didn't felt the earthquake, but it was really shocking to read the news this morning.

It's horrific.

How about the other Italians on the boards, anybody knows where they live and if they are okay?

The death toll is rising minute by minute Corriere della Sera is already talking about more than 100. :no:

My condolences to Italy and its citizens. Last spring I felt a small quake in our area an nearly fainted from fright as I was lying there in bed.

I heard about that this morning. Apparently, so far 50 people are dead and 50,000 are homeless. The earthquake destroyed the whole town.

I hope that all our italian friends on here are ok.

Gio, I'm glad to hear you're ok. The only other Italian poster I know of is Eleonora, and her location is Udine, so I figure she's likely fine.

I hope that many of the people missing will be found alive by the search and rescue teams.

Yeah, Eleonora lives near me, so she is also far away from the earthquake zone. I think that Hiara is from Northern Italy, so again away from the earthquake.

There are already more than 150 deaths and around 100.000 homeless.

i live in the north of Italy so i'm fine thanks, but it's terrible seeing the News, the dead are more then 150 and tv said few minutes ago that missing people could be about 250, there are a lot of homeless! the University dormitory collapsed and the hospital in L'Aquila is umpraticable, many little villages are almost distroyed, it's really a nightmare

Hiara, I'm so glad you and your family are ok!

The news are so horrible that I'm speachless. All my thoughts and prayers for the people from Aquila and others cities affected for the earthquake.

How horrible! My thoughts and prayers are with the Italian people.

Italian members (off topic)

As I myself was in the midst of an earthquake before and remember how scary it was, I want to express my sympathy to all the Italian members of this board. Hope all of you are o.k., and hope the Italian skaters are as well.

viv said:

As I myself was in the midst of an earthquake before and remember how scary it was, I want to express my sympathy to all the Italian members of this board. Hope all of you are o.k., and hope the Italian skaters are as well.

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Thanks viv! Me, Eleonora.d and Hiara are ok, because we live in Northern Italy and hopefully we didn't felt the earthquake.
I think the top Italian skaters are OK too, because generally they live in Milan or Turin (Northern Italy), where the biggest and more important rinks are found.
L'Aquila is a city near Rome and I don't know if there is a skating rink there. So I don't know if there are some lesser known skaters affected.

Viv, that was scary being in the midst of an earthquake. Hopefully I never witnessed one and hope it won't happen.

Tommorrow a skating show will be held in Turin sponsored by Lancia (car brand) with many important skaters such as Plushenko, Lambiel, Kostner, Capellini/LaNotte, Lang/Tchernishev, Bonaly, Contesti, Savchenko/Szolkowy, Volosozhar/Morozov and the Kerrs. Part of the money will go to the people affected by the earthquake.

Yes I am fine. I live in Northeast Italy quite near the border with Austria and Slovenia just like Gio.
We live in a seismic risk area anyway, here we had a terrible earthquake back in 1976 which killed almost 1,000 people and left something like 150,000 homeless.

It was a real tragedy especially because after the first big quake there were an awful lot of aftershocks, which is appening in Abruzzo as well.

Unfortunately what happened in Abruzzo is that both historic old houses (which cannot be easily rebuilt) and relatively new houses are completely damaged or destroyed and cannot be accessed. It will be necessary to understand why those were not earthquake proof buildings (f.i. the college dormitory).

Right now the major problem is to find a place to stay for all those people, as there are at least 17,000 homeless.

A few links:
http://calgary.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20090406/quake_italy_090406/20090406/?hub=CalgaryHome
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Major_magnitude_6.3_earthquake_strikes_central_Italy
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/7/newsid_2518000/2518519.stm

I also wanted to let you know about Valentina Marchei's benefit bid on Ebay with Live Onlus Benefit Association:

http://www.onluslive.org/

http://members.ebay.it/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=onluslive

http://www.artonice.it/?q=it/node/6946

They planned to make a benefit bid for various projects; by winning the bid you will be able to skate with Valentina. After this terrible tragedy, all Live Onlus associated decided to give part of the money raised for the earthquake victims.
The bid will start today at 19.00 GMT + 1 (Bruxelles time) and will last for one week. You will be able to donate few money also by buying a bracelet.

At 18.00 , Valentina will be online with her fans on this website
http://olimpiadi.blogosfere.it/2009...a-pattinatrice-azzurra-valentina-marchei.html

There are two rinks in Abruzzo. One is Avezzano and the other one Roccaraso. I think that both should be about 50 km from l'Aquila. They should be affected by the earthquake but in a minor way at least I hope so. I will let you know.
The topic is also discussed here :
http://www.goldenskate.com/forum/showthread.php?p=389046#post389046

gio, eleonora, I'm glad that all of you are well. As I am from Switzerland I knew that the center of Italian skating is in the north, but I didn't know where all of you are from. The pictures on the tv are horrible.

There just was another quake a few minutes ago, as powerful at the first one (5.5/5.7). Homeless are estimated to be arounf 70.000.

OMG!!!!!

I feel so sorry for you people in Italy

thanks to everybody for your thoughts and prayers! it's so horrible to be helpless in fornt of this, few hours ago there was another big quake but after that rescures saved a 24 old years girl buried under her house for 42 hours, i hope that somebody else will be saved
the worst thing is that some of these buildigs are new, and it's painful thinking that if they were build in earthquake-proof way many lives could be saved

I'm praying for safety, help and comfort for all those affected!

I am deeply shocked at the big earthquake that hit the L'Aquila area and my thoughts and my prayers are with the Italian people.

Hiara80 said:

it's so horrible to be helpless in fornt of this, few hours ago there was another big quake but after that rescures saved a 24 old years girl buried under her house for 42 hours, i hope that somebody else will be saved

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I read that news and do hope that more victims will quickly be rescued.

Hiara80 said:

the worst thing is that some of these buildigs are new, and it's painful thinking that if they were build in earthquake-proof way many lives could be saved

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Yeah, I heard many comments about that now. Even the WHO is astounded that the hospital was completely destroyed and says that hospitals need to be earthquake proof.

Apparently after the last earthquake, that resulted in a collapse of a primary school and in the death of over 20 (?) first graders, politicians promised that things would change. A few things happened, but only on paper. The entire country was classyfied in different areas, from endangered to low danger, there were rules implemented etc. But nothing actually changed, deadlines were deferred, Berlusconi granted amnesty twice to people who illegally built houses or enlarged their houses without making sure that those houses are safe.

The earthquake was between 5.8 and 6.3 (there were different numbers) - that's somewhere between a moderate and strong earthquake. For example the last 6 big earthquakes in Japan (since 2004) were all stronger than that and didn't cause nearly as much damage.

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Reading about earthquakes now... Among the worst and strongest earthquakes are the ones in Alaska and Kamchatka. But nobody lives there, so there was never that much damage. And apparently after the Great Kanto earthquake in Japan, vigilantes in the Japanese population hunted down Koreans, because they thought that those were responsible for the fires :think: Why do we always need a scapegoat? I have one for Italy though, in this case it is of course the rotten political system in Italy. The most powerful earthquake ever recorded was in Chile, 9.5 Heh, see that map here, that long yellow line through Middle Europe, with the two red spots? That's me! Well, obviously not me, but Aachen is one of the two tectonic active places in Germany, the mountain range south of Aachen consists of ancient volcanoes (that's what the two red spots are for I guess). Isn't it strange that Russia is such a huge country but somehow not very earth-quaky, apart from Kamchatka?

This map looks a bit scary, like a bunch of ants ruling the planet, but for anyone who is afraid of earthquakes: Belarus looks to be a safe bet (not sure about the political climate though), Uruguay and the Sahara aren't too shabby either.
So this is how the Japanese islands came to exist (image from Wiki). I didn't know that, I only knew how the Himalaya and the Alps originated. But it is actually quite logical that something similar would occur if two oceanic plates meet.

That's one complicated subject. I need to know more! But my English is deserting me, I guess I'll get myself a good book from the library.