On Earthquakes

As you probably know, last week an earthquake destroyed a significant number of towns in Abruzzo, in the center of Italy. Around 300 died and thousands were affected in different ways.

The earthquake brought out several issues that I find interesting. I will only comment on two of them. First, even if Italy is a country known to be prone to earthquakes, the concept of earthquake engineering is not widely used. Not even modern constructions are built considering the possibility of an earthquake. Truly unbelievable. Coming from Colombia, where most buildings have been built or adapted so as to resist earthquakes, I found that very intriguing.

The second thing that surprised me was that the public reaction to a natural disaster was exactly like in Colombia. Not only: there is a widespread tendency to donate money. But, does a "first-world" country such as Italy really need money to overcome this?

One would expect an European country to be financially prepared to face unexpected events, including (and especially) natural disasters. Not only regular people pay taxes for that (money that funds civil associations such as the fireman and the Red Cross) but also insurance companies should take care of the bulk of the reconstruction costs. Perhaps the state should inject some fresh money and activate suitable logistics to ensure a timely reaction, but that should be a fraction of the entire reconstruction costs. Not even donating stuff makes sense: that should be covered by any reasonable emergency plan. The only thing worth donating in these cases is blood.

I am afraid that donating money is only useful for the donor: some sort of personal satisfaction by means of an SMS, I suppose. The (rather ephemeral) satisfaction of doing something. So perhaps the only benefited from those donations is the corrupt political system that rules Italy. The same political system that should have enforced strict policies for earthquake-resistant buildings. The same system that has publicly stated that reconstruction will take "many years".

Poor Italy. (I was tempted to conclude with "poor Italians" but, as they say, each country has the government it deserves.)