The problem of medieval villages and earthquakes

By Andrew Gully, Chief Editor

In Japan and California, they’ve spent billions on state-of-the-art earthquake and tsunami preparedness schemes. In poorer countries like Nepal, Haiti, and Indonesia, they’ve resettled survivors in less quake- or flood-prone areas. But Italy presents a fairly unique challenge for earthquake engineers: how do you make historic, medieval towns and villages safer without knocking the whole lot down?

Precariously perched along the spine of the Apennine mountain range, villages like Amatrice that were destroyed by Wednesday’s earthquake are cultural jewels, set in some of Europe’s most beautiful and unspoiled landscapes. You’re not going to stop people wanting to live there; you’re not going to prevent tourists from visiting; and the tectonic activity is unlikely to cease any time soon.

All you can do is try to mitigate the damage, try to keep the toll as low as possible. A strict building code is clearly a good place to start, but Italy already has one of the most stringent in the world.