I WAS a Euro MP in 1976 at the time of the Friuli earthquake in northern
Italy. I recall it killed more than a thousand people and I was asked why
something couldn’t be done to release some of the pent-up tensions in the Earth
that lead to such tragedies.
Reading “The quake machine”
(New Scientist, 30 June, p 35)
brought it all back to me. The article highlighted the work of international teams, such
as the one led by Valerio De Rubeis, a seismologist at the National Institute of
Geophysics in Rome. The emphasis has been on releasing tension…
