A devastating earthquake purportedly predicted for that day by a long-dead seismologist has made Roman locals to leave their town in fear of the catastrophe.

Raffaele Bendandi, the deceased seismologist, estimated a gigantic tremor to shake Rome in on May 11. His prediction has caused debates among Italians in a number of websites, blogs and social networks.

Italy’s civil protection agency emphasized in their recent statements that earthquakes can not be predicted as according to official scientific views. In lieu with this, the national television network RAI has run programs directed at calming rising panic among Romans. However, these pieces of information are just falling on deaf ears.

A barman Fabio Mengarelli said in an interview, “I'm going to tell the boss I've got a medical appointment and take the day off. If I have to die I want to die with my wife and kids, and masses of people will do the same as me."

Chef Tania Cotorobai too would be on leave on May 11. "I don't know if I really believe it but if you look at the internet you see everything and the opposite of everything, and it end up making you nervous," the lady chef said.

The devastating effects of the 2009 earthquake in L’Aquila are still fresh in their memories. The noted earthquake which was also felt in Rome killed more than 300 people. It even gave rise to controversies about Giampaolo Giuliani, who in the previous days tried to warn the local population of an imminent tremor. Officials, on the other hand, say Giuliani was wrong about the tremor’s exact location.

Bendandi, who died in 1979, supposed that earthquakes are the results of the combined movements of the planets, the moon and the sun and they are perfectly predictable.

In 1923 he heralded a quake would strike the central Adriatic region of the Marches on January 2 the following year. He was two days inaccurate but Italy's major newspaper, Corriere della Sera, published a front page article on it titled "The man who forecasts earthquakes."

The present panic appears to be inducing fear in the age of internet than to Bendandi himself. Paola Lagorio, the president of an organization dedicated to Bendandi and which preserves all his manuscripts, says they make no mention to any earthquake around Rome in 2011.