This post is part of a series called The 2013 L'Aquila Earthquake L’AQUILA, Italy–The fire chief was waiting for us at the security gate to the hilltop old town center.  He assigned a fireman to drive and escort us through this abandoned city. I found the Italian people to be extremely friendly and helpful even under such extreme conditions. The three of us got into the fireman’s four wheel drive truck and up the hill we went. I asked him to stop the truck when I saw the destroyed building. It was a nightmare. This was a total collapse of…

This post is part of a series called The 2013 L'Aquila Earthquake TIVOLI, Italy–I arrive at Tivoli on April 13th after a 15 hour KLM flight from Tokyo, where I was on vacation with my family and doing research at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. I met up with an Italian engineer, Ilbe Salvaterra, from our partner company, Global Risk Consultants at the Rome airport at 9:30 pm. It is always nice to have a good local engineer on our reconnaissance team to investigate a disaster area. Ilbe rented a car and we drove to the town of Tivoli. This…