President's editorial

On April XNUMX of the year two thousand and nine, at three thirty-two, the darkness of the night flooded the Italian sky. In that same minute, however, the earth moved so much under the capital of L'Aquila that many houses, churches and public buildings were unable to resist its disruptive force.
Not only one seismic event was recorded on that fatal day: despite the awareness that that area was particularly exposed to earthquakes, that event and all the associated seismic sequence before and after forced us to renew and rethink the way of communicating the danger and seismic risk. Every earthquake teaches, represents a scientific experiment in which we learn a great deal and the knowledge acquired must be used to better deal with subsequent events.
INGV thus analyzed around 60.000 earthquakes from that period; through the seismic tomography real "CT" of the subsoil have been realized. The structure of the fault system has been reconstructed in depth, outlining its architecture with an accuracy never achieved before. For example, the behavior of the fluids in the crustal volume before and after the earthquake has been reconstructed, giving us extremely new and valuable information.
In addition to scientific activity, we cannot fail to recall with admiration and pride the commitment of the men and women of INGV who, for many months since 6 April, have dedicated all their professional and life energies to the injured Abruzzo population, returning at the end of the long journey people whose human enrichment is the added value of INGV's best scientific research.
It is important to remember earthquakes because they will return: we tend to put them in a remote corner of our memory in an attempt to forget the painful events, but instead it is necessary to study them with ever greater accuracy and be afraid of them: only in this way will we know them to the point of being able to build with the most correct anti-seismic criteria, to save lives, homes and the social fabric. Even if one day we manage to predict them, we must always prioritize prevention, which must be based on the best possible science of the seismic phenomenon and its possible amplifying effects. Anniversaries help not to lose memory and to be aware of the importance of research and the long and continuous work required to be able to defend ourselves adequately before they happen again. For this reason, also thanks to the Lazio Region, a day has been set up to be dedicated to earthquakes, on 13 January, to remember, especially in schools, the terrifying Marsica earthquake of 1915, with about 30.000 victims; the National Civil Protection, together with various other bodies, including INGV, will set aside a week in October for a public awareness campaign on natural risks, starting with IoNonRischio.
With this spirit, the month of April of the INGVNewsletter is largely dedicated to our activity in the L'Aquila area. In fact, the INGV headquarters in L'Aquila is our constant scientific and operational center in an area which, like the Apennine ridge to which it belongs, is in the DNA of the Institute and of all those who work there.