On April 6, 2009 at 03:32 a.m. (local time) a strong earthquake (Ml=5.8; Mw= 6.2) hit the town of L’Aquila and its surroundings.
As is well known, unfortunately the earthquake had dramatic consequences. There have been over 300 victims, thousands of injured and countless homeless people (anyone wishing the help them can make a money transfer to the bank: “CARISPAQ SPA”, Iban code: IT 53 Z 06040 15400 000 000 155 762 – BIC/Swift code: BPMOIT22XXX – quoting as reason for the transfer: “Vittime terremoto L’Aquila”).
In spite of being rather close to the most heavily affected areas, fortunately neither the people nor the equipment of the Gran Sasso Laboratory have been damaged by the seismic events. All the running experiments are working smoothly, and the external buildings have been essentially untouched.
For what concern our experiment, its structures have been designed to withstand earthquakes up to a magnitude of 9 (way much stronger than the strongest event of the current seismic sequence) and have not suffered any consequence. Nonetheless we were afraid of possible damages to the more delicate (non-structural) inner parts of the detector. Yet everything seems to be intact and unaffected. We are planning to resume the normal operations as soon as possible.