Earthquakes: World's Most Terrifying Forces | Deadly Disasters | Free Documentary

[Music] [Music] little can prepare you for the horror of the deadly disaster we focus on in this episode when the earth shakes buildings collapse and the ground quite literally opens up under your feet there's absolutely no way we can prevent an earthquake happening the earthquake is one of Nature's most terrifying phenoma throughout history there has been a serious earthquake almost every year and they have caused the death of millions of people in this episode we feature the Northridge earthquake that struck Southern California in 1994 and the Quake that devastated Christ Church New Zealand in 2010 and 2011 as well as the 2009 earthquake that destroyed much of the beautiful medieval city of Laila in Italy killing 300 and leaving 60,000 homeless with eyewitness accounts and expert contributions we dig deep into the fascinating science and show the effects of this destructive and deadly disaster an earthquake is categorized by any shaking of the ground due to the action of seismic waves in the Earth's crust so when an earthquake happens you get vibrations sent out through the ground in two different ways the first one which is uh felt at the surface is called a p wve and that's energy traveling back and forth from the the earthquake source to the surface in this kind of um orientation but the most damaging type of seismic wave the one that causes damage to buildings is called the the swave and that causes sort of um that causes vibrations to occur in this sort of up and down and side to side motion which really um strongly shakes the ground but what exactly causes the powerful shock waves that create so much Mayhem an earthquake occurs when stresses build up over time on a fault and when that fault slips okay so when one side of a fault moves past the other side then that radiates seismic energy okay it radiates waves and the ground shapes an earthquake is the very rapid movement wavelike movement of the Earth's surface and that can be caused by for example an undersea lands light it can be caused by also volcanic eruption it can be caused by uh tectonic plates moving past each other but essentially it's the very Rapid Release of energy that's being felt on the Earth's surface the part of the earth that we live on is called the crust it's as little as 5 km thick under the ocean and between 45 to 50 km thick on the continents this crust is floating on a soft mantle of molten rock and far from being solid the crust is actually made up of vast separate tectonic plates that are moved around by the currents in the molten rock beneath them where the plates meet they slide past each other at the rate of 3 to 5 cm a year about the same speed as your fingernails grow but the movement is not steady our Earth plates are shuffling around and as they interact with one another you develop what are called for lines that's where the earthquake happens is on the foot line the plates may be locked against each other for many years until the strain becomes too great and they suddenly slip along a folk line sometimes for several meters all at once the cracking Rock sends out shocks of seismic waves in all directions which are felt as earthquakes every year there are about 50,000 earthquakes that are powerful enough to be felt by anyone in the vicinity around 100 are so violent that they will damage any nearby structures the shaking that is caused by an earthquake um is not just dependent on the magnitude of an earthquake but is also dependent on how close you are to the fault but failed when such a violent earthquake occurs in the vicinity of a village town or city it is almost certain to result in death and injury earthquakes were largely a mystery until the emergence of the science of seismology at the start of the 20th century since then we have gradually begun to understand why and how earthquakes occur it had long been noticed that earthquakes tended to occur along clearly defined bands that crisscrossed the world's surface then came the discovery that the surface was not actually solid but consisted of moving sheets of rock which were named as tectonic plates the areas where these vast plates rubbed against each other were seen to coincide with the belts where earthquakes most often took place so the largest earthquakes worldwide happen on subduction zones so these are um at were boundaries where tectonic oceanic plate meets a continental plate and essentially the oceanic plate is pushed down underneath the continents these faults are very very big and the earthquakes that happen on them can be very large the largest earthquakes so these can be magnitude eight to mun nine earthquakes such as the 2004 Sumatra earthquake or the 2011 tohoku earthquake in [Music] Japan one of the most notable belts of activity is one that goes around the edge of the Pacific Ocean this is where nine out of every 10 earthquakes occur it accounts for earthquakes in many Pacific Nations including New Zealand Japan Alaska and along the vast Coastline of both North and South America the area along this belt is also known for its volcanic activity giving rise to its popular name the ring of fire another belt of seismic activity is the Alpine Himalayan orogenic belt this stretches from the Mediterranean through Asia all the way to the East Indies as its name suggests the Alpine Himalayan belt was responsible for the formation of many mighty mountain ranges from the atlas in North Africa the Alps and the caucuses all the way to the Himalayas in Asia which includes Mount Everest the highest peak in the world an earthquake is fundamentally movement on a f or a line of weakness within within the crust and that movement it happens many many times over thousands of years millions of years that can generate changes in the ground surface if this is your ground surface a normal fult will mean that the ground will move steadily like this over time so what that means is that you'll get mountains being generated on this side and flat Plains being generated on this side the earthquakes from this belt Rel release around 15% of the world's seismic energy the earthquakes in the Continental regions are generally smaller so magnitude 6 to magnitude 8 but actually they paradoxically they lead to a greater number of deaths worldwide the type of earthquakes that release the huge amounts of energy that cause major tremors are called tectonic earthquakes in 1906 San Francisco was rocked by such an earthquake after a rupture in the San Andreas fault which forms part of the Ring of Fire the ground shifted horizontally by as much as 6 M along a 430 km stretch releasing a colossal amount of energy study of this earthquake gave rise to the elastic rebound Theory it states that these earthquakes occur when a mass of rock is no longer strong enough to hold the strain it is under and suddenly gives way along a fault line as the two masses of rock rip in opposite directions they may stick together for a moment before sliding apart again this irregular coming apart is what causes the waves of vibration that can be seen in the shaking of buildings during an earthquake similar seismic waves can be set off by human activity such as mining fracking for gas and the underground testing of nuclear devices research carried out in order to discover when a country had run a nuclear test helped expand our ability to detect seismic activity earthquakes give rise to some of the most dramatic effects to occur in the natural world they cause extraordinary shifts in the ground which may rise fall and open up leading to landslides and mud flows buildings Bridges pipelines and other infrastructure may be damaged or destroyed anything can be damaged in an earthquake and that can cause a whole host of problems after the earthquake Devastation is often Amplified when buildings are built on soft soils sand or mud as this is easier for seismic waves to travel through compared to other natural disasters earthquakes are particularly dangerous uh per event we have more people killed in earthquakes than we have in a flood or in in a fire that is per number of people affected by an event and the simple reason for this is they're very difficult to predict but also there are other reasons because earthquakes can trigger other natural disasters they can trigger flooding they can trigger land slides and can they can trigger tsunamis before the invention of the seismograph earthquakes were measured simply by the amount of shaking of the ground with the invention of the seismograph in 1875 it became possible to measure the intensity of movement against a time scale so you could tell when an earthquake had occurred and how strong it was then in 1935 a scale was developed by Charles RoR which became known as the RoR scale for the first time scientists were able to accurately compare different earthquakes however the RoR scale was found to be less precise when measuring the most powerful earthquakes and so a new system was developed this new system measured the distance of fault moved and multiplied it by the force required to cause this movement and was called the moment magnitude scale on this scale a magnitude 1 earthquake releases as much energy as 170 G of TNT that's a very small Tremor in fact you would not be able to feel anything under 2.5 on the moment magnitude scale by comparison a magnitude 8 is the equivalent of exploding 5.4 billion kilog of TNT that magnitude of earthquake would completely destroy anything near its source the magnitude scale is logarithmic so for every unit of magnitude you release 30 times more energy plus two units of magnitude you release a th000 times more energy the most powerful earthquake ever to hit the United States occurred in Alaska in 1964 a magnitude 9.2 Alaska is the area most prone to earthquakes it endures a magnitude 7 earthquake almost every year the largest measured earthquake anywhere in the world was a magnitude 9.5 that struck Chile in 1960 it killed thousands of people and left Millions homeless most earthquakes occur in areas that are known danger zones but sometimes earthquakes can be triggered by hidden fault lines lurking beneath the surface on which people have built their homes offices hospitals and schools each individual for might only fail every hundred years every thousand years but it could still actually be very hazardous so there are lots of fors that uh are located you know in right next to a city but we actually don't even know that they exist just such a concealed fault ruptured in Los Angeles on the 17th of January 1994 it was 4:31 in the morning on Martin Luther King Jr Day the San Fernando Valley lies just over 30 km from downtown Los Angeles in the pre-dawn darkness many in the densely populated community of Northridge were no doubt planning to use the federal holiday to catch up on some sleep but their calm was shattered by a powerful magnitude 6.7 Quake it shook the ground for a terrifying 40 seconds the amount of energy in magnitude 6.7 earthquake releases is around equivalent to what was released during the hoshima atomic bomb um so that amount of energy directly beneath um a large city at relatively shallow depth can actually cause quite significant ground shaking and and resulting damage most earthquakes occur less than 80 km under the surface but the hypo center of the North Ridge Quake was just 20 km underground making this a very shallow earthquake which released a colossal amount of energy onto the nearby surface the shocks were so powerful they were even felt 440 km away in Las Vegas the earthquake shook the ground violently from side to side as well as up and down causing catastrophic damage that fault moved in what we call a a Thrust movement so we have a geological fault like this and then one side of that fault moved upwards I mean the earthquake lasted what 10 15 30 seconds well it lasted 4 years for me and my mother she's 80 now and I don't know how many in the immed immediate aftermath 20 people were reported dead and 1,000 injured but with many unaccounted for and feared trapped under debris it soon became apparent that the death toll would rise most people die in earthquakes because of building collapse it's not the earthquake that kills people it's the building Rescuers began pulling people out of the rubble and they were quickly joined by the emergency services but we couldn't get out you couldn't get out we couldn't get out if we hadn't been dragged out of there we' have never got out they told us when we moved in it was an earthquake safe [Music] building several apartment buildings caved in including the Northridge Meadows apartment complex where 16 people lost their lives when their homes caved in on top of them as they slept they all lived on the first floor of the stucco building which collapsed into to the open void of the car parking area below them this apartment building went up 2 ft over 2 ft and dropped down 12 and the rest of it was gone and when the earthquake hit I knew immediately it was different than all the others I've been in very strong at one point I was thrown down I think that's when the uh two top floors came down the first the Quake caused catastrophic damage to the city's infrastructure electricity failed plunging the city into blackout water mains burst flooding the streets gas from ruptured Mains was set Al light causing fires all the airports including Los Angeles International were immediately closed eight hospitals were so severely damaged they had to be evacuated doctors were forced to perform life-saving surgery in triage centers out in the open the area worst hit was the San Fernando Valley where 3 million people were affected by the Quake the Emergency Services performed heroically but were under tremendous strain they brought in sensitive listening devices to locate survivors amongst the rubble by sheer luck the earthquake occurred at night limiting the casualties which could have been greater had it occurred in the day I know if it was this large scoreboard at a sports Stadium which collapsed because it was 4:30 in the morning there was nobody in the stadium but it had been a sports event going on a lot of people would have been injured or killed a parking lot in the local shopping center was completely destroyed but as it was empty no one was hurt there was extensive damage to the highways seven major freeway Bridges collapsed a policeman was killed when his motorbike pitched off the edge of an overpass another Factor limiting the number of casualties was that buildings had been constructed to strict safety codes following the Silmar earthquake of 1971 although every building constructed since that time survived this latest earthquake intact much of Northridge did not mayor Richard Ren declared a state of emergency and imposed an evening curfew however there were reports of looting and warnings that the earthquake might not even be over when an earthquake occurs it may not release all its energy at once we now have had more than 6,000 after shocks this is because faults May rupture both before and after and these aftershocks are sometimes almost as severe as the original earthquake aftershocks can occur over quite a protracted period of time partly because aftershocks can trigger aftershocks of their own but also because there are other process is operating for example fluids might be moving through the subsurface driven by the first earthquake that then might in turn put stress on smaller fors and Trigger extra earthquakes despite the Fe of aftershocks people were told that wherever possible by far the best thing to do was stay in their homes damage from the earthquake was widespread the Santa Monica Beach Community was particularly badly affected it is built on much less stable ground and although it was relatively far from the epicenter of the Quake It suffered violent ground tremors there's always earthquakes around a but not nothing like as bad as this one I didn't expect anything like this the Santa Monica freeway collapsed fouling up Los Angeles traffic for months cuz we can't get out we can't get in so we have to go Way East to go west and Way West to go East you have to go around so many different areas and you don't never you don't know where you're going half the time many had to struggle through the ravaged City for 4 hours in order to find hospitals and Med Medical Care the death toll of the Northridge Earthquake was approximately 60 and 9,000 people were [Music] injured 82,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed while over 20,000 people had to leave their homes California is [Music] dead [Music] the earthquake occurred on a fault that had been previously unknown a so-called blind thrust fault that was hidden under the uppermost layers of rock this is in no way a part of the the San Andreas fault system this is part of the a completely different uh set of plate movements that are peculiar to Southern Califoria fornia experts have since found other such buried faults including one that lies right beneath downtown Los Angeles underlining the vulnerability of the millions of people who live and work in the area so there's lots of faults but are particularly quite small in the continents that um may only have an earthquake every thousand years or tens of thousands of years so this means that there's lots of faults that W necessarily have had an earthquake in living memory but are actually still POS a very significant Hazard President Clinton visited Northridge to survey the aftermath of the Quake having witnessed the devastation himself he requested Congress release $6.6 billion US in relief unfortunately it's going to take a while it's probably going to take as much as a year it doesn't take very long to demolish the structurally damaged portion but to replace it can take as much as a year we hope last overall it cost in the region of 42 billion us to repair the city making this one of the most expensive disasters ever to hit America so if you had a similar earthquake um in a similar area right now even when there are even more buildings in that area that the damage will be many orders of magnitude [Music] higher at the time of the North Ridge Quake Southern California had few systems monitoring the tectonic plates respond responsible for causing earthquakes since the disaster several agencies including NASA have set up an integrated network of over 250 GPS stations across California and Mexico with the aim of developing an earthquake early warning system however earthquake early warning is really a misleading term current systems only kick in when an earthquake is already taking place but they do enable you to know how strong an earthquake is in real time and then assess how far the effects will be felt in order to warn communities within the danger zone in 2018 the US Geological Survey readied a new early warning system this can detect the very early phase of an earthquake and give warnings of up to a minute before the major Tremors strike that's enough time to slow down or stop trains shut down dangerous industrial operations and give people a chance of getting to places of safety for earthquakes if you have just a few seconds of warning before that strong ground shaking occurs um you might be able to protect yourself um by getting under a table or a desk or a doorway and that can actually be the difference between um life and death in 2019 technology took another leap forward with the development of a mobile app to alert Los Angeles County residents of Earth Quakes of a magnitude five or more and there is no doubt that early warning is needed the whole of California straddles the infamous San Andreas fault which runs for 1,200 kilm along the entire length of the state it was 1857 when the southern part of the fault last ruptured San Francisco which lies further north on the fault burned for 3 days after the big Earthquake of 1906 with such an active fault line running through California it isn't a question of if there will be another earthquake but when another new world city Christ Church in New Zealand is similar to San Francisco in many ways Christ Church had its first contact with Europeans when Captain Cook landed there in 1770 just a year after the Spanish first cited San Francisco Bay both cities are situated on fine natural harbors and both are in areas prone to Violent seismic activity but as with San Francisco and so many other cities located in places known for the dangers of deadly disasters the advantages of its location outweighed the risks posed by frequent earthquakes now Christ Church situated on the south island is New Zealand's thirdd largest city with a population of nearly 400,000 Christ Church is a lovely city it's on the east coast of the south island of New Zealand um great vibrant place to be it's an important industrial center as well as a mecca for tourists with its surf beaches modern architecture Heritage buildings museums and galleries despite lying on a major Faultline for most of the 20th century through to the first decade of the 21st Christ Church enjoyed a long period of calm on the 16th of November 1901 the City suffered an estimated magnitude 7 earthquake after this there was relatively little seismic activity for more than a 100 years but that calm was shattered when on the 4th of September 2010 at just after 4:30 in the morning Christ Church was rocked by a magnitude 7.1 earthquake it occurred 10 km below the surface in a previously unknown fault some 40 km west of the city people were jolted awake as the first phase of the Quake caused the ground to shake violently people checked on loved ones and tried to get out of buildings to the safety of open ground as aftershocks continued parts of the ground liquefied some were badly injured buildings and infrastructure were seriously damaged but thankfully there were no fatalities the hazard in that Reg region thought to be smaller than it actually was as residents work to repair their battered City they were hampered by frequent aftershocks New Zealand is quite an interesting place tectonically so in the in the north part of the North Island we've got subduction um where you've got uh the Pacific Plate sinking into uh sinking beneath the the land of New Zealand but you've also got subduction in the South but that happens in the opposite direction so the Australian plate is sink in there and so you've got these two regions which are basically doing this and so in the middle you have to have some sort of fault to accommodate to absorb that that opposite motion the population heaved a collective sigh of relief it seemed as if they had escaped the full Fury of what an earthquake could unleash but the relief was short-lived one Tuesday afternoon just over 5 months later as the people of of Christ Church were busy at work attending school or college going about their shopping or having lunch one of those aftershocks struck close to the city at a depth of only 5 km the 2010 Darfield earthquake released 10 times the amount of energy as we 6.3 Christ Church earthquake but the Christ Church earthquake was so much more damaging because it happened right underneath the city of Christ Church many of the buildings that had been damaged in the previous earthquake collapsed completely damage that's been done to our infrastructure I've got to say it's massive this has taken us not just back to uh the minutes after the earthquake of the 4th of September last year has taken us further back than that bill buildings were severely damaged or demolished but there were not many serious injuries people in the downtown business district of the city were not so fortunate the Canterbury television building a six-story office block full of workers completely [Music] collapsed 115 of them lost their lives more than 2/3 of the 185 people that were killed in the earthquake around the city and in the suburbs people were injured and killed by toppling bricks masonry and rockfalls two city buses were buried beneath falling walls killing eight people while some were killed by Boulders tumbling away from Cliffs triggered by aftershocks tragic stories to be told about chist at the moment we have only lost a we've only lost a house but uh people have lost their lives so you know we're lucky children attending school who had been repeatedly drilled on how to react to an earthquake quickly adopted the turtle dropping to the ground and covering their heads thankfully no children were seriously hurt or killed in any school building New Zealand is really good at earthquake preparation they have excellent building standards people are drilled in school and at home and everyone is kind of ready for an earthquake but here they weren't ready for an earthquake that happened directly under the city in the immediate aftermath of the Quake people rushed to find friends or loved ones others stayed where they were most needed the complications is we we have to go really really slowly and carefully so every single step of the way we are conscious that there could be somebody literally behind a desk or a chair or whatever else many gathered around the stricken Canterbury television building where the majority of casualties occurred as well as the Pine ghoul building where 18 people had died they helped the survivors many of them badly injured in total some 16,000 properties were left severely damaged by the violent shaking the Christ Church earthquake may have also caused more damage because buildings would have been weakened by the shaking from the Darfield earthquake the Christ Church earthquake also caused a terrifying phenomenon known as liquefaction what happens to buildings during an earthquake depends very much on what they built if you built on Solid Rock um the ground doesn't shake so strongly as if it's built on Sandy or or muddy ground parts of Christ Church were built on a a drained Coastal swamp SW and that shock particularly violently during the 2011 earthquake and the ground actually liquefied and mud oozed up between tracks in the pavement and buildings sagged because of the uneven nature of the liquifaction beneath them one of the worst examples of this effect occurred during the 1976 Tang Shan earthquake in China when an area of more than 2,400 Square km was subject to liquefaction causing terrible damage to the southern part of the city in the Mexico earthquake of 1985 the ground beneath the center of the city liquefied even though the epicenter of the earthquake was over 350 km away liquefaction can even induce soil to spew out of the ground in sand volcanoes and cause landslides in a 1964 earthquake in Anchorage liquefaction resulted in a landslide that destroyed 75 homes Christ Church was a really devastating earthquake because we really did not know about the location of a fault underneath the city Christ Church is built to be very seismically resistant to the most likely culprit so the most likely earthquake is going to come from the New Zealand Alps and they're quite far away and the type of shaking that we would expect from those faults is very different from the type of shaking that they did get in the Christ Church earthquake in Christ Church the Fatal combination of ground shake liquefaction and landslides resulted in damage to a huge proportion of all properties in the greater Christ Church area older brick and mortar constructions were especially vulnerable to shaking many of the city's iconic Heritage buildings were were either damaged or destroyed both the Anglican and the Catholic Cathedrals suffered extensive damage and the clock in the famous Victoria Tower was frozen at 12:51 bearing lasting Testament to the very moment the Quake struck the cost to put right the devastated city was estimated to be upwards of 20 billion New Zealand dollars [Music] following the earthquake even 5 years after the event the city has not really [Music] recovered after the disaster the New Zealand government set up a commission to investigate the buildings that were damaged in the Christ Church earthquakes following months of inquiries the then prime minister John Key stated that 175 out of the 185 deaths deaths had been caused by structural failures the design and construction of the CTV building where 115 lost their lives came under severe criticism if a modern city like Christ Church had been left shockingly vulnerable to the threat posed by earthquakes what chance would a City built 800 years ago have that's exactly what is revealed in our next case study many regard the beauty and historical importance of the 13th century city of lailla to be on par with Florence and Saltsburg the city is situated on a hill in the appenine mountains about 130 km Northeast of Rome overlooking the alterno river behind its medieval walls lie a host of Barack and Renaissance churches with narrow streets giving out onto magnificent patas laer itself sits in a fairly wide flat uh mountain basin and it's surrounded by mountains on most sides and that difference in the topography the mountainous regions versus the flat regions in in Italy and any in many places worldwide is directly due to the movement of the on the faults that results in in earthquakes Laila is no stranger to seismic disaster having been largely destroyed by two previous earthquakes in 1461 and again in 1703 and a more recent but relatively minor quake in 1958 historical data on earthquakes can be extremely useful because where we've had earthquakes in the past we're very likely to have earthquakes again in future then on the 6th of April 2009 at 3:32 in the morning the city was rocked by a magnet ude 6.3 earthquake it lasted for 20 seconds causing terrible damage as well as death and injury to the terrified inhabitants much of Italy lies on the cusp between the giant European and African tectonic plates and has suffered many earthquakes in such a seismically active area there are frequent smaller Tremors this was the Cas in the months leading up to the devastating earthquake in laquila in October 2008 the year before the disaster dozens of Tremors were felt in the city and the surrounding areas 99 out of 100 times a small sequence of earthquakes is not going to result in something big during the beginning of 2009 these seismic swarms as they are called continued to plague the city aftershocks are commonly smaller than the earthquake that triggered them but they can actually also be larger and that's expected for some smaller amount of earthquakes this is actually likely the case in Laila where it was a swarm of smaller size Mist tea in the weeks months before the LA earthquake it was not surprising that many of the medieval buildings disintegrated what did startle and stun experts was the damage to Modern buildings even those like the new s salvator hospital it was lorded as being earthquake proof when it first opened in 2000 just 9 years later it lay in [Music] Ruins doctors had to treat victims of the earthquake along with their regular patients in a courtyard in laquila most of the modern buildings collapsed and were later found not to have been built to the regulations in place many young people lost their lives University students were killed when a dormatory there were housed in collapsed significant damage in laa happened on buildings that were built in the 70s and ' 80s after a good code for earthquake resilient buildings had been established um so those buildings that were built later and should have been resilient should have been reinforced concrete and had much more resistant to shaking they fell and they caused many [Music] deaths in Ono which was one of the small villages right on top of the fault the death toll there was around 12% so about 12% of people living in that town unfortunately died the damage to the cultural heritage of the city was said to be incalculable part of the Basilica of Santa Maria de kagio caved in completely later in June the European commission proposed granting € 494 million EUR to fund the repairs and recovery of the region aftershocks continued to be felt throughout Central Italy a constant reminder to the whole nation of the terrible situation being endured by their fellow citizens in laquila many who had lost their homes had been rehoused although thousands were forced to remain in temporary camps it's difficult we have a tend and we stay we don't know how long next week maybe one MTH the city's historic Center including the Basilica of San Bernard Doo as well as the city hall remained closed to the public long after the earthquake shut behind a sealed off Red Zone while they were made safe and then painstakingly rebuilt a process which appeared later to have been hampered by corruption in the awarding of public contracts so I visited Laila about 5 years after the earthquake and actually it was really shocking to see that there was still extensive damage in the in the city center that really was a loss of identity to many laquins and and people that live there to have such damage to their historical City Center in the aftermath of the disaster survivors began to question why they had not been warned of the impending [Music] catastrophe the prediction of earthquakes has long being the Holy Grail of seismology predicting earthquakes is currently impossible and may always be impossible while early warning systems are capable of giving people vital seconds to get out of buildings or assume safe positions longer term warnings that would enable mass evacuation as have been possible for disasters like hurricans have proved elusive there is no way to know exactly when and where an earthquake may happen um we we can do a fairly decent forecast of where earthquakes might happen so we can say yeah this place is very likely to have some earthquakes but we can't say when it's going to happen so the word prediction just doesn't apply unfortunately the whole issue of scientists abilities to raise the alarm about earthquakes was brought into sharp Focus after the Laila Quake six scientists all internationally respected seismologists and geological experts along with a government official were charged with multiple manslaughter they were all members of a national commission for the forecast and prevention of major risks prosecution alleged that they had underestimated the risks posed by tremors that had been felt in the months before the devastating earthquake and given inaccurate incomplete and contradictory information to the public their advice was that um there had been this background uh swarm of very small earthquakes and what they said was that whilst that could lead to a larger earthquake and they certainly couldn't rule that out in most cases those swarms don't normally lead to a larger event the accused all vigorously protested the contentions of the prosecution bet trial of vacula scientists was controversial IAL because the earthquake experts who met at the meeting 6 days before the Lao event actually gave very clear measured reasonable and scientifically accurate advice one of the defendants Bernardo de bernardini said I believe myself to be innocent before God and men when they were found guilty and sentenced to 6 years in prison scientists from around the world were horrified they felt that the trial set a shocking precedent which would deter experts from sharing important knowledge ultimately leaving the public less safe I think the trial set a dangerous precedent and in particular it had the potential to create quite a strong chilling effect to discourage scientists from engaging with policy makers from engaging with the media on these really important humanitarian issue Enzo bosi one of those found guilty said that he did not understand what he had been convicted of scientists maintained that it had not been possible to predict what would happen in Laila this opinion was validated when the defendants successfully appealed and their sentences were quashed it's hugely important that scientists engage with policy makers and with the general public to help feed into um preparations for emergencies uh and um building codes and to make sure that the the actions that uh that take place at a government level are actually based on a solid foundation of [Music] science earthquakes kill and destroy by causing fires ruptures in the ground landslides and tsunamis but more individuals die as a result of the collapse of buildings and other manmade structures the most important thing that could be done worldwide to reduce earthquake deaths would be for governments to enforce building codes so by far the most effective action that can be taken to protect people from this type of deadly disaster is to construct buildings capable of withstanding the vicious ground movements that occur during a quake huge advances in this field have been achieved shock absorbers made of rubber can be incorporated into the buildings Foundation to soak up the violent Tremors steel frames within buildings are now designed to allow the whole construction to sway during an earthquake open areas in the immediate vicinity of buildings have been factored into planning so that people who can evacuate have safe spaces to congregate in the chance to live in an earthquak proof building would be some comfort for the millions of people that live near the world's fault lines without the ability to accurately predict earthquakes it represents the best chance we have of surviving this particular kind of deadly disaster deadly disasters [Music] [Music] e yeah

Channel: Free Documentary

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Id: t1b9MpGUcs8

Length: 50min 6sec (3006 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 26 2024