Earthquake Predictors
"Forecasting the Catastrophe"
A new release by David Nabhan, author of "Predicting The Next Great Quake"
When Will The Next "Big One" Hit?
Is it possible to have advance warning for the next great earthquake? Slymar, 6:00 AM. Whittier Narrows, 7:42 AM. Sierra Madre, 7:43 AM. Big Bear. 7:50 AM. Landers, 4:47 AM. Gorman, 4:51 AM. Northridge, 4:50 AM. Long Beach, 5:54 PM. San Bernardino, 5:18 PM. Half of the large quakes (6.0 or greater) that have struck Southern California in the last seventy-five years occurred at either dawn or dusk. The great quakes on the U.S. West Coast also fit this historic pattern. The Great San Francisco Earthquake clocked in at 5:12 AM. Anchorage was destroyed on Good Friday at 5:36 PM. The last “Big One” on the San Andreas (1857) hit Fort Tejon in the early morning. The May 2, 1996 magnitude 5.4 Seattle earthquake, the largest in that city’s recent history, rocked the Puget Sound area no more than 69 minutes outside the time window forecasted in “Predicting the Next Great Quake” , David Nabhan’s previous book. Is this pattern merely coincidence, or are there underlying, scientific reasons for these cycles?
Headed by six scientists, Japan’s Tokai Warning System constantly evaluates seismic data for possible precursory evidence. If an event is deemed imminent, TWS has far-reaching emergency powers. China has the State Seismological Bureau in Beijing. The SSB’s Center for Analysis and Prediction has functioned as China’s warning system for over thirty-five years and is still in place today. The SSB has made many successful predictions of time, place and magnitude, evacuating hundreds of thousands of persons scant hours before earthquakes have struck. Many other European and Asian countries have similar bureaus.
Nabhan has very plausible evidence that lunar and solar tidal forces are part of the dynamics in the triggering of earthquakes. The author has also uncovered a large body of scientific works, published in the world's scientific journals, and dating back to the middle of the 1800s, which strongly supports this thesis. Recent studies published in the journal Science, and conducted by a consortium of UCLA and Japanese seismologists also support this view.
And what does the USGS say about earthquake prediction?
Earthquake prediction is a taboo field of study for the United States Geological Survey (USGS), unfortunately the very governmental agency nominally in charge of making progress in this area. USGS's conservative approach has drawn criticism from prominent seismologists worldwide.
