Mount Pinatub

For volcanoes, local governments should establish an exclusion zone and evacuate the citizens who live inside, as well as gather emergency funds and basic provisions (In the Path of a Killer Volcano). They can also build dams to prevent mudflows, as has been the case at Mount Sakurajima (McDowell 650). In contrast, earthquakes are too short-noticed and brief to necessitate evacuation. Instead, national and local governments should collaborate to ensure that buildings, roads, and bridges susceptible to quakes are fortified, and that citizens are instructed what to do in case of a seismic event. (“Managing tectonic hazards”).

However, by undertaking these preparations whenever there is a chance of a natural disaster, a government may find itself in a predicament if the disaster never occurs. In the Mount

Pinatubo scenario, geoscientists were afraid of raising their warning to level 2 or level 3, because an evacuation would require time, labor, and money, regardless of whether the volcano actually erupted. People might panic, leading to unnecessary casualties. Moreover, such a severe warning could scare away tourists and potential residents for years to come (In the Path of a Killer Volcano). For example, the town of Mammoth Lakes’ antipathy toward the USGS has been growing for years, as federal announcements and media reports about potential volcanic eruptions may have weakened the local real estate market (Monastersky 376). Above all, a false positive could cause geoscientists and the government to lose credibility (Geller and Stein 361). Had they forecasted Mount Pinatubo to erupt, but it never did, then the people of Luzon would be less likely to believe future forecasts, an obvious threat to public safety. There are no easy answers, but it does make sense to urge evacuation when there is a reasonable chance that human lives would be put at risk or when potential economic losses would outweigh the economic losses of an evacuation. Although the eruption of Mount Pinatubo was not 100 percent certain, the possibility of 5 to 20,000 deaths and over USD 1 billion in economic damage justified the evacuation (In the Path of a Killer Volcano).
The Mount Pinatubo evacuation was a success story, but what happens when geologic hazard predictions fail? The 2009 L’Aquila earthquake provides a case study. Following thousands of tremors in the Abruzzo region of central Italy, seven scientific experts and a few local officials convened to discuss the probability of a major earthquake. At the meeting, Enzo Boschi, president of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, said, “A large earthquake along the lines of the 1703 event is improbable in the short term, but the possibility cannot definitely be excluded” (Wolman). Sure enough, just six days later, a 6.2-magnitude quake struck Abruzzo, killing 308 and injuring 1,600 more. A year later, all seven experts were convicted of multiple manslaughter, and sentenced to six years in prison (Wolman). By putting the experts on trial, the public prosecutor made a strong, populist statement against the lack of preparation for this major earthquake, but incarcerated at least one innocent person, as Boschi clearly communicated the possibility of a quake. However, this does not mean that nobody should be held responsible for the hundreds of casualties, many of which could have been prevented.
The residents of L’Aquila were accustomed to earthquakes. Although building codes were not properly enforced, the city’s history of earthquakes had created a culture of caution, in which residents slept outside whenever they feared a major quake. Had L’Aquila received the accurate geologic hazard prediction—that there was a chance of an earthquake akin to the 1703 quakes—then hundreds of lives could have been saved. So what went wrong? First, local officials were reluctant to warn of an earthquake because they feared inciting mass panic in an already cautious city. Italy’s civil protection chief said that the goal of the scientific meeting was “to shut up all of these morons and calm people down” (Wolman). Then, the geologic hazard prediction was not communicated to the public effectively; the media played a sound bite of a hydrologist, not a seismologist, taken from before the meeting. He said, “The scientific community assures me that the situation is good because of the continuous discharge of energy” (Wolman). This was a completely unscientific statement. Finally, the Civic Protection Agency implemented no measures to prepare for the geologic hazard, instead issuing an inaccurate press release claiming that there was no chance of a major earthquake (Wolman). Taken together, these facts show that the Italian government, not the geoscientific community, was negligent in 2009. Putting the government officials on trial would issue a strong statement, and lead to the conviction of guilty people. In accordance, the appellate court freed six of the seven scientists, and reduced the sentence of the last one, the hydrologist, to two years. Speaking on the court’s decision, Lucy Jones, a senior adviser for risk reduction at the USGS, said that the scientists provided a correct forecast of the seismic hazard, and saw nothing that could be considered criminally negligent (Banks). Science should not be a crime, but negligence should be. The geoscientists, the government, and the media should have effectively coordinated to communicate the geologic hazard prediction.
In all localities prone to geologic hazards, governments should work with scientists to launch public awareness campaigns informing citizens how to prepare for and act properly in such an event.

These awareness campaigns should occur through a variety of media, including newspapers, radios, televisions, and computers, and regular geologic hazard drills should be conducted by businesses and schools. After a group of scientific experts has established that a specific geologic hazard could threaten human lives or cause significant economic losses, the government and the media have a responsibility to communicate this forecast, as well as the uncertainty regarding the probability and the severity of the hazard. In 1985, the Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupted in Colombia. Geoscientists had forecast the eruption weeks beforehand, but government and media disinvolvement led to a lack of awareness about the eruption, and two subsequent mudflows killed over 23,000 people. Radio Armero was urging calm and playing gleeful music when the electricity went out and mud engulfed the station (McDowell 652). Hence, geoscientists cannot minimize damage from hazards on their

own.
In the case of the Mammoth Lakes forecast, reporters questioned many different scientists, so media accounts provided different assessments of the risk posed to the Long Valley area (Monastersky 377). Citizens heard mixed messages, which partially explains the failure to communicate this forecast. Moreover, the American Geophysical Union suggests that the media communicate the causes of uncertainty of a forecast, as well as the approaches being taken to address the uncertainty, bearing in mind that uncertainty is often underestimated. Put simply, the media should communicate what geoscientists know, what they do not know, and what they think about the potential hazard, and why different parts of the forecast fall into those different categories (Geller and Stein 361). By being as precise as possible, geoscientists, the government, and the media do their part in ensuring the most appropriate public response, whether the hazard occurs or not.
To summarize, the technology exists to predict geologic hazards, but these predictions always possess uncertainties in the probability of the hazard occurring and the potential amount of damage. Despite these uncertainties, various groups should cooperate to minimize the casualties and economic loss from geologic hazards. They are at fault if they misrepresent a forecast to the public, but geoscientists should never be put on trial for providing accurate forecasts. As the technology to predict geologic hazards improves, the government policies to minimize damage should correspondingly be updated. There will be always be more volcanoes and always be more earthquakes. But if geoscientists, the government, and the media coordinate to raise public awareness about geologic hazards and enact disaster preparedness strategies for specific events, then there will be many more Mount Pinatubos than L’Aquilas.