In my previous piece, I wrote where 91 people lost their lives due to an earthquake which occurred in Italy on Monday.  The count is now up to 150 as reported by the AP.  My thoughts and prayers go out tonight not only for the dead and injured, but to the people of Italy.

When the earth trembles due to quakes or volcanoes, I do feel it is screaming out at us to at least pay attention.  As I visited a U.S.G.S. (United States Geological Survey) web site, I was simply astonished.

On their site, they report the number of quakes which range from 2.5 on the Richter scale to a 3.8.  What I found surprising is that in the past seven days, a magnitude 3.1 was felt in the state of Georgia.  This area of our country is not within ‘The Ring of Fire’ but still, other regions of our nation have felt quakes and that should concern us.  Even if you live in New York as I do, low magnitude earthquakes have been known to occur here since under the Hudson River lays the Ramapo fault line.

You may say, so what: But in watching a show on the Discovery Channel this region was once connected with Scotland when it formed the continent of Pangaea.

Below is a picture from the U.S.G.S. web site picturing a cluster of earthquakes which have occurred within the past seven days.  This cluster has occurred within the ‘Ring of Fire’ from Alaska all the way down to southern California.  Thankfully, we do have this organization monitoring earthquakes.

As we speak of Italy’s quake, is that another quake registering a magnitude 7 just occurred in the Kuril Islands as reported by Reuters. Which is higher than the one that struck in Italy. Some of you may ask where are these islands: They are 940 miles NE of Tokyo, Japan.  While no risk of any tsunami hitting Japan’s island of Hokkaido, the important item to come away with is that this quake is being monitored.  Again, take notice of the cluster of earthquakes that have taken place here in the United States.

As I berated Governor Bobby Jindal for thinking that the monitoring of volcanoes and earthquakes was pork, I came upon an AOL article picked up by CNN stated, “Gioacchino Giuliani, an employee at a physics institute at Gran Sasso, near the badly-hit city of L'Aquila, has demanded an official apology for what he says was an unforgivable failure to act on his predictions.” But, what Giuliani fails to comprehend is that this is not about him, but the 150 people now dead.  The apology should go to the citizens of Italy.

Not to take this man’s word that he noticed an increase of radon levels prior to this quake, in reading this report, you will clearly read where these scientists wrote, “The abrupt changes in radon levels often appear as precursors of earthquakes, based on the microseism and the underground anomalous movements. This change takes place because of the physical stresses which are built up within the earth crust to trigger an earthquake.”

While the CNN article picked up by AOL states, “Local authorities have insisted Monday's 6.3-magnitude event was part of a sequence of tremors in a quake-prone area and neither the size nor the timing was possible to predict.” I would suggest that they speak to the scientists who wrote the report above.

I do feel that scientists such as seismologists and geologists are an integral part in keeping all of us safe especially when we have witnessed many deaths coming from earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.  Call them the canaries in a coal mine.

Author’s email address is, xmjmac@optonline.net

www.marymacelveen.com/blog/_archives/2009/4/7/4146161.html