GNGTS 2013 - Atti del 32° Convegno Nazionale

Animal behaviour and the economy before earthquakes C. Fidani 1,2 1 Osservatorio Sismico “A. Bina”, Perugia, Italy 2 Central Italy Electromagnetic Network, San Procolo, Fermo, Italy Introduction. Observations of anomalous animal behavior have been recorded countless times for earthquakes. In fact, various historical earthquake accounts have reported them. In one of the most ancient earthquake testimonies handed down to us by Diodorus (60 - 30 a.c.), it was written that rats, snakes, centipedes, weasels and worms fled from the city of Helike in the Gulf of Corinth in 373 BC, five days prior to a strong earthquake that plunged the city into the sea. Recently, a documented case of abnormal animal behavior led to forecasting a strong earthquake in the Chinese region of Liaoning in February 1975. From June 1974, after a long period without earthquakes in an area of high seismic risk, the Chinese group studying earthquakes published a warning on the danger of a major earthquake expected within two years to that area. The authorities, based on studies conducted in previous years, and with the support of the population, educated by experts to communicate to the central seismic mainly animal behavior, took up an increasing amount of alerts (Tributsch, 1982). From these and other anomalies measured instrumentally, the authorities were able to infer the imminence of the earthquake and organize the movement of people from their homes to emergency shelters, prepared for the occasion, a few hours before the strong earthquake of magnitude 7.3 that stroke Haicheng. From the data collected in L’Aquila after April 2009, it shows that nobody was able protect himself before the main shock from strange animal behavior, despite the great number of observations; why? The Chinese case suggests possible answers: perhaps because these studies in Italy have never been carried out. Instead, following the earthquakes of Friuli (Tributsch, 1982; Matteucig, 1985) and Irpinia (Matteucig, 1985), these studies were conducted with very promising findings. Those from Friuli were published in the journal Nature in 1978 (Tributsch, 1978). So, the answer must be another: perhaps because these findings were not used to examine the dangerous situation in L’Aquila during the seismic swarm, nor was the population made aware of the results of this research. In fact, today we need to consider the effect of a prediction on economic damage. To limit such damage, a prediction should be strongly supported, as in the case of the 1975 Haicheng quake, when many anomalous phenomena were documented. Economic damage before earthquakes was not a topic that was discussed after the L’Aquila earthquake, however it would have been a key to understanding what happened on that occasion. Biological anomalies of L’Aquila earthquake. The April 6, 2009 L’Aquila earthquake was the strongest seismic event to occur in Italy over the last thirty years with a magnitude of M = 6.3 (Chiarabba et al. , 2009). Around the time of the seismic swarm many instruments were operating in Central Italy, even if not dedicated to biological effects associated with the stress field variations, including seismicity. Testimonies were collected using a specific questionnaire immediately after the main shock, including data on earthquake lights, gas leaks, human diseases, and irregular animal behavior. The questionnaire was made up of a sequence of arguments, based upon past historical earthquake observations and compiled over seven months after the main shock (Fidani, 2010, 2012). Data on animal behavior, before, during and after the main shocks, were analyzed in space/time distributions with respect to the epicenter area, evidencing the specific responses of different animals. Several instances of strange animal behavior were observed which could causally support the hypotheses that they were induced by the presence of gas, electric charges and electromagnetic waves in atmosphere (Fidani, 2011). Based on the evidence collected in the months following the earthquake of 2009, almost all of the dogs that lived in the affected region showed restlessness, barking, howling and crying in the minutes before the quake. In other animal species, many of their behaviors left indelible 71 GNGTS 2013 S essione 2.1