Professor Dave Petley, the Wilson Professor at Durham University in England, is blogging about the earthquake in the town of L’Aquila, Italy. His blog includes maps and geological information. The story is being constantly updated on The Forum Forum blog.

The Roman Forum reports that, just days ago, a scientist was forced to withdraw comments in which he warned of an impending quake:

As Italians woke up this morning to the disaster, it emerged that a local Abruzzese seismology expert, Gioacchino Giuliani, had predicted less than two weeks that just such an earthquake was likely to strike in the L’Aquila area. Interviewed on 24 March for the DonneDemocratiche.it blog (reproduced here courtesy on Youtube) Giuliani warned that based on the examination of the behaviour of the chemical radon in the most earthquake-prone areas of Italy and its confluence with lunar factors, that some seismic activity was highly likely. According to La Repubblica he was later forced to withdraw the ‘alarmist comments’ following political pressure.

Here’s an article from the New York Times in 1908, about an earthquake almost exactly a century ago that “wiped out the cities of Messina and Reggio and their surrounding towns in Sicily and Calabria,” killing 150,000.