Talk:2009 L'Aquila earthquake

Rename Page

• A relevant name of this article could be 2009 L'Aquila earthquake. TouLouse (talk) 10:31, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
• Support, but 2009 Abruzzo earthquake would be even better IMO, as it was felt throughout Central Italy and did some significant damage even outside L'Aquila. What do you think? --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 11:10, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
• Support, L'Aquila seems to have been the hardest hit by the quake, so renaming the article 2009 L'Aquila earthquake seems fair enough. TheRetroGuy (talk) 11:26, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
• Support-either L'Aquila or Abruzzo will suffice, but 2009 Italian earthquake is too vague.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 11:47, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
• Support - Current title too general, I'd go for Abruzzo. Mikenorton (talk) 12:36, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose - The Italian article, which this page is based on, is about events from December 14th, 2008 to April 6th, 2009. There were many minor earthquakes since 2008 to the strongest on on the 6th. So this pages cannot be labeled as 2009. If you are talking about the April 6th earthquake, than you should split the article. --Exephyo (talk) 13:10, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose It is loosely fine as it is. Maybe not for Italians strictly but for an outside viewer - the vast majority of readers - it's what first comes to mind: "That Quake that happened in Italy in 2009". I could just put it 2009 Italy earthquake.--AaThinker (talk) 13:51, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

The earthquake started on december until now. The main shock was on 6th April, not the earthquake. Again, talking about the main shock is different to talking the earthquake (2008 to 2009). --Exephyo (talk) 14:06, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Seeing as it's an Italian event, and the Italians are calling it the Abruzzo earthquake, the article should be named thus. 2009 Italian earthquake is extremely vague. It would be like calling the 1906 San Francisco earthquake the 1906 American earthquake!--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 14:11, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the above comment. 2009 Abruzzo Earthquake or 2009 L'Aquila Earthquake make much more sense. Bonzostar (talk) 14:42, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

• Support move to 2009 Abruzzo earthquake. Italy is an earthquake prone country. The last earthquake that occurred there happened in December 23, 2008, so 2009 Italian earthquake is too ambiguous. If you look at the foreign articles almost all of them are 2009 Abruzzo earthquake or 2009 L'Aquila earthquake. I would prefer 2009 Abruzzo earthquake because it has hit more than just the city of L'Aquila. --Tocino 17:23, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
• Just I moved the page -- now is 2009 L'Aquila earthquake.TouLouse (talk) 16:28, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Have just fixed the double redirect from 2009 Abruzzo earthquake. TheRetroGuy (talk) 16:37, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Good job. While you moved the page I was typing the following: “The shocks in December were very minor; I wasn't able to feel any of them, and they wouldn't even deserve an article if there hadn't been the Big One this morning. (The only shocks above magnitude 4 were that of 30 March and those of this morning.) Whereas I agree that the series of shocks since December should be mentioned, calling it 2008–09 Abruzzo earthquake might be overkill. But even that over-specificity would be better than the over-vagueness 2009 Italian earthquake: there have been other quakes in Italy in 2009, including a 4.6-magnitude one yesterday in Forlì. So I'd go with 2009 Abruzzo earthquake (1st choice), 2009 L'Aquila earthquake, 2008–09 Abruzzo earthquake, or 2008–09 L'Aquila earthquake.” I'm fine with the title, now. --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 16:44, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

• Comment, it was I who called it the "2009 Italian earthquake" with the intention that it be changed at a later date. When it happened there was no clarity on the exact location and I needed a quick title. --candle•wicke 20:02, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Magnitude

The article says 6.3, but all the news reports here in Italy say 6.8, including a noted volcanologist in a live interview.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 12:02, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

All the English language sources I have seen have used 6.3 (compare Italy earthquake 6.3 with Italy earthquake 6.8). The Italian version of this article also uses 6.3 - Dumelow (talk) 13:42, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

The news reports here are now saying 6.3.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 14:28, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

But site of the National Institut of Geophysics and Volcanology shows Mw of 6.2 [1] --PaoVac (talk) 19:50, 6 April 2009 (UTC) It states ±0.30 as the error on the magnitude, so writing 6.3 instead of 6.2 if most sources do so is not a great deal. --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 20:00, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Deaths

From the BBC: "Deaths were reported in the surrounding towns and villages of Castelnuovo, Poggio Picenze, Tormintarte, Fossa, Totani and Villa Sant'Angelo."[2] Does this mean that there were deaths in each of those places or just in the region which contains all those places?

Those are towns in Abruzzo. The earthquake was felt in contiguous regions but there is no evidence of deaths so far. --Exephyo (talk) 13:01, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Prior warning

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/5114139/Italian-earthquake-experts-warnings-were-dismissed-as-scaremongering.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jinniuop (talk • contribs) 13:24, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Houses destroyed

I guess all these houses collapsed. [3] TouLouse (talk) 13:30, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Time zone

The article says that as of 15:xx, some people are still trapped under rubble and so on. What time zone is this? Can we convert that to UTC and make clear what time we are talking about here? --Ryan Delaney ^talk 14:50, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Now Italy is on the UTC+2 zone because of summer time practice (European Summer Time). Now is 17.32. --Exephyo (talk) 15:32, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Prefered is to list local time first (and say what time zone it is; presumably Central European Summer Time) with UTC following in ()s. Jon (talk) 15:26, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Year in title

Why do we have to slap "2009" in front of every other news-related article? There is no L'Aquila earthquake so 2009 is completely and utterly redundant. — Jan Hofmann (talk) 16:44, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

No...year must be an this article...see others articles about earthquakes. TouLouse (talk) 16:49, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) There is no L'Aquila earthquake probably because articles about earlier quakes mention the time in the title, too. This isn't the first major quake in the history of L'Aquila. --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 16:49, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Until there is an article about another of those alleged quakes in L'Aquila "2009" doesn't serve any purpose, as there are no articles to differ it from. "2009" here is as useful as 1945 death of Adolf Hitler. — Jan Hofmann (talk) 16:55, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Ssst! Please stop! Thanks! TouLouse (talk) 17:03, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

There has been one death of Adolf Hitler. There have been many earthquakes in L'Aquila. We want the reader to be able to figure out which one we're talking about by reading the article title. And we don't want to move the page if/when someone writes an article about some other quake in L'Aquila. --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 17:42, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

According to the article, there have been several earthquakes there over the centuries. So the sugested title is what would be more approatite to a disambig page pointing to each of the ones that are note worthy enough for their own articles. Jon (talk) 15:30, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

The deadliest earthquake

The L'Aquila earthquake isn't the deadliest in the last 30 years. In 1980 a huge quake in Irpinia(an area near Naples) killed 2,914 people. I change the incipit of the article. --79.10.34.71 (talk) 22:23, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

The article should read the second deadliest earthquake to hit Italy in 30 years. What do the other editors think?--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 07:59, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

No, what it should read is "the deadliest earthquake to hit Italy in nearly 30 years" 24.25.215.235 (talk) 09:33, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree, the current version ("deadliest ... in nearly thirty years") is fine, and better than "the second deadliest earthquake to hit Italy in 30 years". -- Avenue (talk) 09:41, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It should say "the deadliest in nearly 30 years", as it does now. It was the deadliest since the end of the Irpinia quake, which was over 28 years ago. Maybe even more explicitly: "the deadliest since the 1980 Irpinia earthquake". --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 09:49, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's even better. -- Avenue (talk) 10:09, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Just for mentioning ...

I have an Italian station along with regular satellite, the channel being RAItalia (formerly just RAI), as do most of my family. I'd happened to see what's on television on there, at 2:00AM, and the regular program had been interrupted for the breaking news. Then some family had called and said that there was a massive earthquake in the whole of the province of L'Aquila, strongest at the capoluogo (capital) of the same name. I tuned in to ABC World New an hour later to see if we over here in America had gotten the news. Fortunately, they covered this quake, but it was rather short. They spent more time talking about North Korea's rocket launch than the earthquake. And the guy's pronunciation of "L'Aquila" was hilarious! Instead of saying it as L'Àquila, he said L' Aquìla! (Sorry, but I just had to mention that!) Anyways, I had heard that a bit farther south in the province, near the border with Isernia, the magnitude reached a whopping 9.0. I hardly believe this, but quakes do gain strength as they move, so it would not be unusual. I have lots of family throughout the province, especially at the city of L'Aquila itself. Maria Santucci, one of our more respected family members, was spared, but the condominium she was in was a disaster, the walls were stripped out and the whole interior of the condo could be seen from the outside, though the building did not collapse. Her husband is a policeman, and so I bet he has way more work to do than always. Now they can only sleep in their car and hope they can salvage what they can. Well, nothing will be salvageable anyways because right now it's hailing and pouring in L'Aquila, and it's currently the coldest city in Italy. Well, I pray that all victims and survivors of the disaster recover, and that the province and especially the city itself can rebuild. This quake has ended up being worse than the one that hit Umbria and Marche in the late '90's, I think it was. If you have a reply, or perhaps your own story to share of this, Wikipedia as a whole, and especially I, would love to hear it. IlStudioso 00:06, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Regarding your mention of a reported magnitude 9, this is likely to refer to the felt intensity of the earthquake on the Mercalli intensity scale. Mikenorton (talk) 15:30, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

World coverage of events such as these is unfortunately quite bad anyway. Sky News didn't seem to handle it very well when I switched it on but thankfully I eventually found some more info on this via the BBC. And Wikipedia is of course always a good place to come for even more sources!!! :) --candle•wicke 20:06, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Name of the warner

Gioacchino Giuliani, according to wikinews http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Scientist_says_he_predicted_Italy_earthquake,_was_ignored is not same as Giampaolo Giuliani which cites wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_L%27Aquila_earthquake#Prior_warning_controversy). what is true who is wrong?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WieaAPrQEN4 talks of Giampaolo Giuliani Giampaolo (not equal) Gioacchino --Stefanbcn (talk) 14:21, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

shouldn't this part somehow link to sth. like earthquake prediction methods? I vaguely recollect that radon emission and animal behaviour have been studied, after wich animal behaviour gained in popularity as a method of prediction. Even that i wonder why there is no mention, i think it would have been observable. Animals for example tend to go downhill. Radon is known for a long time as a method, because the radon emissions associated with vulcanic events and earthquakes are well recognised. The argument against it, and i think the other chemical methods has always been they are such a bad indication, i don't know in how far that is sincere, but i remember evicting vulcanoes on the base of radon emissions (or another chemical method) was considered no succes.24.132.170.97 (talk) 04:51, 8 April 2009 (UTC)