Earthquakes in Italy



As I learned last week, Italy is the resident of two major tectonic plates.  It comes to me no surprise that almost the entire country is either in a moderate or major earthquake hazard area.  Looking at the seismic hazard map, the biggest and most likely seismic occurrences primarily occur smack dab in the middle of Italy running south along the mountain ranges.  On the "latest quakes" link you can input Italy and in a 1 year time span Italy has experienced roughly 50 earthquakes with an average magnitude around 5.  Below I've included a chart from National Geographic that simplifies and puts into perspective the energy created from a seismic event.  While the magnitude of 5 energy shows the energy exhausted in relationship with candy bars, the next step up at 6 shows how devastating these events truly are.  

Italy currently does not seem prepared to deal with another major seismic event.  Italy is inundated with historical building which not only require cutting through a lot of red tape to renovate, but a lot of money as well.  In the links below, you will read that Italy has a few plans in motion to help mitigate losses from earthquakes.  Churches and Basilica's are held dear not only to Italian's, but many religions and people across the world.  The focus will be given to them, and the plan is to strengthen at least the bell towers with straps and chains that will help prevent cracking during a seismic event.  The second plan is with renovating all structures in prone areas with what is called "base isolation".  Simply put, as of right now the bases of buildings in Italy have no shock absorption, base isolation helps stabilize the base during seismic events.  









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OpenQuake Map Viewer - Global Seismic Hazard Map

Seismic zones - INGV (The option is given to translate from Italian to English as a pop up)




Earthquake Mitigation Links

Comments

  1. Sydney YeagerSeptember 6, 2023 at 9:19 PM

    This was very well explained and both the charts and the works cited helped to break down and explain more about the likelihood and size of an earthquake in Italy. I also really enjoyed the fact about the churches being most heavily regarded as necessary.

    ReplyDelete
  2. NikkiSeptember 7, 2023 at 8:13 PM

    Hi Justin, wow yes it looks totally saturated with earthquakes and seems like a hot zone for sure. I wonder how it to live there and having the possibility of a level 5 Richter scale earthquake happen. My country the Netherlands is pretty mellow compared to yours. Mine has some earth quake fault line south of it where many happen. Most of the ones in my country are about 2.0 on the Richter scale. But if you head east of my country if gets pretty bad. Thanks so much for sharing, great information. Nikki

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  3. Lucia CardinaleSeptember 10, 2023 at 9:05 PM

    Hello Justin,
    my boyfriend is from Italy, so this was very interesting. Especially the part about the houses and the shock absorption wow! I also know that there is a volcano in Sicily called Mount Etna I wonder when is the last time Mount Etna went off?
    all the best,
    Lucia
    ps. You did a great job!!!

    ReplyDelete

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