It was 23rd November 1980. The quake struck at 18:34 UTC. Measuring 6.89 on the Richter scale, it centered on the village of Conza. It killed 2,914 people, injured more than 10,000 and left 300,000 homeless. The earthquake is known in Italy as Terremoto dell'Irpinia (Irpininan earthquake). The first jolt was followed by ninety aftershocks. The towns in the province of Avellino were hit the hardest. 300 died including 27 children from an orphanage in Sant'Angelo dei Lombardi. 80% of the town was destroyed. In Balvano, one hundred were killed when a medival church collapsed during Sunday Services. The towns Lioni, Conza di Campania (which is near the epicenter) and Teora were destroyed, and many structures in Naples were leveled, including a 10-storey apartment building. The damage was spread over more than 26,000km including Salerno and Naples. In total, the Italian government spent 59 billion (or 59 thousand milliard) lire on reconstruction while other nations sent contributions. A comparison between measured vertical displacements obtained from two leveling campaigns performed in 1981 and 1985 in the epicentral area of the Irpinia earthquake in 1980 and predictions from viscoelastic Earth models revealed the occurrence of post-seismic deformation due to stress relaxation in the ductile part of the Earth’s crust. Also, the spatial wavelength of the deformation pattern favours relaxation occurring in the lower crust rather than in a weak upper-mantle. The uplift in the footwall explains the 30 mm of up warping of the crust measured along the levelling line crossing the area where the fault pierces the Earth's surface. I think what could have been done to prevent this extensive damage was that they could have built the buildings to resist strong earthquakes. If the buildings are not built properly or well, the building will be very easy to topple, taking many lives.
Bibliography:
Websites
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118846967/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0, extracted 28-02-2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Irpinia_earthquake, extracted 24-02-2010
