Murcia, not Rome

The long-dead pseudo-scientist, Raffaele Bendandi, is said to have predicted a massive earthquake in Rome that would have wiped the Eternal City off the face of the Earth yesterday 11th May 2011. Panic spread though our Capital with many people staying off-work and so-called “experts” organizing open spaces gatherings on the outskirts. Fortunately a day later Rome is still all intact and beautiful. Not so Lorca, a lovely small town in Murcia, Spain, hit by a 5.2 magnitude tremor that killed eight people and injured dozen more. Is this just a coincidence or did the “earthquake prophet” just missed the target of a few hundred miles? After all, Rome and Murcia seem to be on the same seismic fault. But how can someone who died in 1979 have predicted and earthquake?

A self-taught astronomer and seismologist, Raffaele Bendandi seemed to have predicted several quakes, including the one which struck Friuli, Italy, in 1976, claiming almost 1,000 lives. He believed earthquakes can be perfectly predictable as they are the direct result of the combined gravitational pulls of the planets, the moon and the sun. Tasty “food” for those who like conspiracy theories.

Scientists allegedly say that it is very unlikely to predict earthquakes, and definitely not thirty years earlier. A forecast is different from a prediction in that it offers a probability of a quake occurring within a designated time frame as opposed to a far more precise prediction calling for an earthquake of a certain magnitude on a certain fault on a certain date. Seismologists would like to be more precise, but so far, no one has figured out how to predict just when and where the next quake is going to hit.