意科学家因未成功预测地震被起诉

Seven scientists and other experts were indicted¹ on manslaughter charges Wednesday for allegedly failing to sufficiently² warn residents before a devastating³ earthquake that killed more than 300 people in central Italy in 2009.

周三，意大利7名科学家、专家因2009年未能向居民发出地震警报而被控过失杀人罪。那场强震导致意大利中部300多人丧生。

Defence lawyers condemned⁴ the charges, saying it's impossible to predict earthquakes. Seismologists（地震学家） have long concurred⁵, saying the technology doesn't exist to predict a quake and that no major temblor has ever been foretold⁶.

Judge Giuseppe Romano Gargarella ordered the members of the national government's Great Risks commission, which evaluates potential for natural disasters, to go on trial in L'Aquila on Sept. 20.

Italian media quoted the judge as saying the defendants⁷ "gave inexact, incomplete and contradictory⁸（矛盾的） information" about whether smaller tremors⁹ felt by L'Aquila residents in the six months before the April 6, 2009 quake should have constituted grounds for a quake warning.

Specifically, prosecutors¹⁰ focused on a memo¹¹ issued after a March 31, 2009 meeting of the Great Risks commission which was called because of mounting concerns about the months of seismic¹² activity in the region.

According to the commission's memo — issued one week before the big quake — the experts concluded that it was "improbable" that there would be a major quake though it added that one couldn't be excluded.

Afterward¹³, members of the commission gave reassuring¹⁴ interviews to local media stressing the impossibility of predicting quakes and that even six months worth of low-magnitude temblors was not unusual in the highly seismic region and didn't mean a big one was coming.

In one now-infamous interview included in the prosecutors' case, commission member Bernardo De Bernardis of the national civil protection department responded to a question about whether residents should just sit back and relax with a glass of wine.

"Absolutely, absolutely a Montepulciano doc," he responded, referring to a high-end red. "This seems important."

Such a reassuring verdict by commission members "persuaded the victims to stay at home," La Repubblica newspaper quoted the indictment¹⁵ as saying.

The 6.3-magnitude quake killed 308 people in and around the medieval（中世纪的，原始的） town, which was largely reduced to rubble¹⁶. Thousands of survivors¹⁷ lived in tent camps or temporary housing for months.