GNGTS 2016 - Atti del 35° Convegno Nazionale

GNGTS 2016 S essione 1.1 163 of Italy; Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Agriculture and Crafts of Chieti. Thanks to these huge amount of valuable information, it was possible to estimate the number of buildingaffectedbydifferent levels of damage, such as light and severe damage, or irreparable buildings (including collapses), and thus evaluate the MCS intensity degree (Sieberg, 1930). To do this, we analytically applied the method suggested by Molin (2009), that considers the percentage of each damage level as representative of every MCS degree. In order to complete the information concerning the damage within each municipality, we use all the additional data concerning single public buildings, churches and the industrial and commercial activities. Moreover, we carried out an extensive reading of contemporary newspapers at the National Library of Rome. Here we have found useful information inside 15 Italian newspapers (i.e., Il Mattino; Il Giornale d’Italia; La Nazione; Il Popolo d’Italia; Il Popolo di Roma; Il Regime Fascista; il Corriere della Sera; La Tribuna; l’Osservatore Romano; la Gazzetta del Popolo; Roma; L’Avvenire d’Italia; il Lavoro Fascista; il Tevere; il Messaggero), with a total of 58 articles. Obviously, information deriving from the newspapers are often qualitative, reporting just the number of victims in each village, the number of injured, a rough framework of the destroyed houses and of those still inhabitable. It is worth noting that, similarly to what happened after the 1930 “Vulture” earthquake, press-reporters widely emphasized the prompt rescue and assistance provided to the inhabitants by the Fascist government and by the local authorities. However, notwithstanding the severe damage scenario, the whole national press suddenly minimized the event, which soon disappeared from all the newspapers pages. The spirit of the times is well condensed in a telegram sent on October 1 by the Italian prime minister to the Minister of the Public Works: “Make a tour in the earthquake zone - Mussolini” (Fig. 2). Last, but not least, inside the archive of the Civil Protection Department - besides a large amount of telegrams sent by the Prefects to the Interior Ministry, mostly containing the early news on the earthquake effects - we have found a huge quantity of documents attesting the requests of economical support sent by single citizens, the related technical expertise, and the answers provided by the authorities in the following years. Results. First of all, we computed the percentage of buildings affected by the different levels of damage that we mainly deduced from the analytical data derived from Ridolfi (2005). We also filled some information gaps with the information collected from newspapers, telegrams and other primary sources found in the archive of the Civil Protection Department. Then we transformed these percentage in MCS degree (Sieberg, 1930), considering damage levels 2-3 (from moderate to severe damage), 4 (destruction, and/or irreparable damage), and 5 (collapse) in the percentage progression proposed by Molin (2009). This allowed us to obtain robust intensities estimates that generally move away from those in Guidoboni et al. (2007) by 0.5-1 degrees or, exceptionally, 1.5. In the previous studies, many intensity datapoints of this earthquakes were derived tout court from a crude list published by Cavasino (1935) - who likely estimated the MCS intensities on the basis of the fresh information gathered from the local authorities of the time. Therefore, Fig. 2 – The telegram sent by Benito Mussolini toAraldo di Crollalanza, Minister of the Public Works. It is quite clear the intent to minimize the effects of the earthquake.