Nature
News: The earthquake that rocked the ancient city of
L'Aquila, Italy, less than six months ago was caused by a fault
not thought to be a major seismic hazard.The Gran Sasso region
near L'Aquila is criss-crossed with large, looming faults
running through the mountainous terrain that their activity has
created. But the first published analyses of the quake, which
struck on 6 April and killed 307 people, suggest that the
culprit was the Paganica fault, an undistinguished fracture in
comparatively flat ground."It shows it is dangerous to work on
the assumption that the faults associated with the largest
topographic features are going to produce the largest events,"
says Richard Walters, who studies tectonics at the University
of Oxford, UK.
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