Apart from the disaster in Haiti, the local situation near where Jimmy Craig (that’s me) and my wife have our B&B in Italy is worse than we thought it was after the earthquake in December.

1. In the village of Spina, where the most damage occurred, there are a number of houses that were completely destroyed, including the house of our mason, which was one of a circle of five individual houses, all of which were destroyed. These were all recently built – roughly 10-20 years ago, and it’s amazing that no one was even injured in this thing.
2. In the village of Castiglione della Valle, only two km as the bird flies (to drive there is about 5 km from the B&B), a number of houses were damaged, and no small number of them have been condemned or partially condemned (for example, the top floor is no longer livable). I believe these were mostly older buildings (“older” being at least 50 years old or so).
3. In the village of San Biagio della Valle, the clock tower was damaged, the clock no longer functions, and the area around the tower has been blocked off because of the danger of falling masonry. The only visible damage I have seen is a stone wall that fell, the rest of the damage seems to be structural that is not particularly visible.
4. The old (about 150 years old) farm house at the entrance of the gravel road to the B&B also had the upper floor condemned. To be honest, that doesn’t surprise me very much; it’s possible that it may have been condemned in an inspection before the earthquake, had it occurred.
5. In addition to this damage, the local roads have suffered even more than usual from the movement of the soil – this area in general is quite unstable, and roads often develop waves and troughs in addition to cracks.

The thing that surprises me about this (relatively small) earthquake is that the major damage occurred about 8 km (5 miles) from the epicenter. I always thought that the worst damage would be at (or directly above) the epicenter. Apparently here there is a fault line or an old volcanic vent that runs to the southeast from the actual epicenter, which was only 2 km below the surface (for reference, there are oil and gas wells that are twice that deep!). The village of Fontignano is only about 1 km from the epicenter, but didn’t experience nearly the violence that Spina had.

For me, the things to be learned here are

• the local geology is very complex and fractured through a number of different events, including continental plate movements and ancient volcanic activity
• earthquakes, even relatively mild ones, can be dangerous and deadly, and we were very lucky
• I’m no geologist!

Two other notes:

• if the houses and other buildings in Haiti were subjected to the scrutiny that the buildings were here in our area, probably not one building that was still standing after the Haitian earthquake could be classified as being intact and without damage
• as was noted on many of the news broadcasts, the buildings in Haiti were strengthened against high winds and heavy rain, not earthquake. As a result, there was considerable damage from the earthquake to buildings that looked solid, but were not built to withstand that sort of energy.

Anyway, from my point of view, that can be the last earthquake I experience personally, and I will not miss the rest!

As a last note, if you are interested in earthquake history and statistics, I suggest you take a look at the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre website for a live list of seismic activity world wide, 24×7.

Thanks for looking in!

Jimmy Craig
for
Sue & Craig Websites

Mother Nature Strikes Back – Part 2