Defying assertions that earthquakes cannot be predicted, an Italian court convicted seven scientists and experts of manslaughter Monday for failing to adequately warn residents before a temblor struck central Italy in 2009 and killed more than 300 people.

The court in L'Aquila Monday evening handed down six-year-prison sentences to the defendants, members of a national "Great Risks Commission." In Italy, convictions aren't definitive until after an appeals trial, so it is unlikely any of the defendants would face jail immediately.

The trial -- described in 2011 by a USGS scientist as "a witch hunt" -- sent shock waves of its own through the international science community.

"It's a sad day for science," said seismologist Susan Hough, of the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena, Calif. `'It's unsettling."

Timeline

April 6, 2009: Powerful quake strikes L'Aquila, Italy, killing more than 300 people.

May 27, 2011: Scientists charged with manslaughter for failing to predict the natural disaster.

Sept. 20, 2011: Trial begins as prosecutors call for "justice."

Oct. 22, 2012: 7 scientists convicted of manslaughter.

Tom Jordan, a seismologist with the University of Southern California (USC), chaired an international committee on earthquake forecasting convened in Italy following the 2009 quake. He agreed that scientists worldwide were rattled.

“It’s widely viewed within the scientific community that this is an unfair result,” Jordan told FoxNews.com. "We can’t predict earthquakes. We can only forecast them with low probability."

Among those convicted were some of Italy's most prominent and internationally respected seismologists and geological experts, including Enzo Boschi, former head of the national Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology.

"I am dejected, desperate," Boschi said after the verdict. "I thought I would have been acquitted. I still don't understand what I was convicted of."

"I consider myself innocent before God and men," said another convicted defendant, Bernardo De Bernardinis, a former official of the national Civil Protection agency.

'I thought I would have been acquitted. I still don't understand what I was convicted of.'

- Enzo Boschi, former head of the national Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology

The trial began in September 2011 in this Apennine town, whose devastated historic center is still largely a ghost town.

The defendants were accused in the indictment of giving "inexact, incomplete and contradictory information" about whether small tremors felt by L'Aquila residents in the weeks and months before the April 6, 2009, quake should have constituted grounds for a quake warning.

The 6.3-magnitude quake killed 308 people in and around the medieval town and forced survivors to live in tent camps for months.

Many much smaller earth tremors had rattled the area in the months before the quake, causing frightened people to wonder if they should evacuate.

Prosecutors had sought convictions and four-year sentences during the trial. They argued in court that the L'Aquila disaster was tantamount to `'monumental negligence," and cited the devastation wrought in the southern United States in 2005 when levees failed to protect the city of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

A defense lawyer, Filippo Dinacci, told reporters that the sentence would have "big repercussions" on public administration since officials would be afraid to "do anything."

Relatives of some who perished in the 2009 quake said justice has been done. Ilaria Carosi, sister of one of the victims, told Italian state TV that public officials must be held responsible "for taking their job lightly."

The world's largest multi-disciplinary science society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, condemned the charges, verdict and sentencing as a complete misunderstanding about the science behind earthquake probabilities.

Earthquakes are, of course, nearly impossible to predict, seismologists say. In fact, according to the website for the USGS, no major quake has ever been predicted successfully.

"Neither the USGS nor Caltech nor any other scientists have ever predicted a major earthquake," reads a statement posted on the USGS website. "They do not know how, and they do not expect to know how any time in the foreseeable future."

Jordan told FoxNews.com his report called for the creation of a a system that puts out information about earthquake risk on a regular basis, something he called "operational earthquake forecasting." Even the U.S. system is not ideal, he noted.

"The scientists get caught between a rock and a hard spot in terms of trying to answer the question, 'will there be a big earthquake,'” he told FoxNews.com. The ruling could have a "chilling effect" on future communication efforts, he added.

The verdict also calls for damage payments that could add up to hundreds of thousands of euros, Science magazine wrote.

Don't get your PE license, then.

As an engineer, I find this horrifying. Natural disasters are one thing, but I straight up build **** that can kill people. I do not expect to go to jail if I make a mistake.

Chilling.

The Hyatt Regency PEs had their PEs revoked and were convicted.

Engineers responsible for neglecting to peform inspections of the reactor vessel head at Davis-Besse were convicted of criminal negligence and face jail time when it was found the reactor head was corroded down to the steel liner in an area the size of a watermelon. This is an appropriate punishment for this type of negligence.

The Hyatt Regency collapse was a combined failure of unanalyzed harmonics when the as designed single rod support structure was constructed with two offset rods, instead. The design engineers are not to blame; it was the field engineers that do the structural inspections fault. The lack of jail time in this case is not inappropriate.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using Tapatalk 2

1. The engineers in the incident you describe were not imprisoned for negligence. They were imprisoned for covering up the problem/lying about it.

2. ASCE took the licenses of the Hyatt Regency engineers away, but they weren't convicted of anything in a court of law.

The PE is liability for failures in design.

Now, that's for design. If the project is not built according to design, if construction deviates at all, the PE is no longer liable if the deviation caused the failure.

If the PE says to do X, the construction team does X, and the failure occurs because of X, then the PE is fully liable for all damages if his design did not follow proper code. If he followed code, he's in the clear. An engineer can not be held liable for bad building code. If he didn't follow code, he's up **** creek.

Now, Xeq, if the PE says to do X, and the construction team does Y instead of X, and the failure occurs because of Y, then the PE isn't responsible for a damn thing. The construction team did not follow proper instructions.

This, by the way, is why engineers make twice as much money as education majors - just in case you were still wondering back in that other thread. Engineers not only assume responsibility for lives, but they are also responsible for determining liability. They can take a complicated mess like the Hyatt Regency, which other hairless monkeys look at and think, "Zomg Building collapsed! Civil engineer responsible for mass murder!" and determine a specific event in a specific component of the building which caused the problem.