Hi All,

I was reading Don's post below about the scientist that thought more money was being spent for earthquake preparedness and not enough on earthquake prediction. It brought back so many memories of my visits with various predictive seismologists over the past few years. I kept hearing this question repeatedly, "do you think there will be more success, if you throw more money at it?" Then they would cite facts on the different foreign countries who had invested heavily, with no better results. Talk about brain squeeze.

Is knowing more better? It makes me wonder. If you get to close to the subject at hand, does it leave any room for conjecture? What happens to left field inspiration? Is it being killed just by so much information? Frankly, in my most humble opinion, yes, indeed, knowing to much, especially to much theory is killing off the parts of the brain that stretch out and make the leap of inspiration to new theories.

For the past couple of months, after the development of the ear tone ring map, I noticed that I was hearing a lot of ear tones for area's in the 10th and 11th rings on the map and yet, no quakes were arriving. This puzzled me greatly. Then this last week, quakes arrived on ring 10. Ah, I felt a sigh of relief. These included the quakes in Yorba Linda and the Channel Islands. I can't answer the question as to why it took so long between the time I was hearing the tones before the quakes arrived, yet I knew where to expect them. This must be at least a token sign of progress. At least now I can narrow it down in a more scientific fashion to the where factor, even though the when factor needs considerable work.

In the years since I started working on trying to understand this phenomenon I had not reached this point where I am today. In this I do see some progress. Not by leaps or bounds, but a slow methodical picking away at it, until it started showing some signs that at least one segment of the puzzle was showing signs of being solved. I must learn great patience as this thing may take another 20 years before all of the puzzle pieces fall into place.

While some may think that an unfair amount of money is being spent on preparedness and not enough on prediction, the entire scientific community is suffering financial hardships. One of those became evident recently when Don and I learned the equipment scheduled to be installed at the lower end of the Rodgers Creek Fault was axed by budget constraints. So, the area that has the greatest long term probability of having a 7.0 quake in the Bay Area will remain without monitoring. The seismic gap is in quiescence today, and only careful observation by those who pay attention will bring the focus as to when this area will finally let go.

From my vista Lowell Whiteside is the only scientist that I know who has an ability to bring together many elements which point to why earthquakes occur where they do. I made a discovery about scientists who presented interesting theories in my goings about in the scientific community and the discovery was that people who are creators of theory, one's which stand the test of time, are people who notice things.

Max Wyss of course will be always given credit for his Seismic Gap Theory, alongside of him, Jim Berkland and his Seismic Windows and so many others who have made valuable contributions over the years. They remind me of one of my favorite comedians, Jerry Seinfeld. Here is another person who notices. He notices people's behavior and its effect on social life. Though I love his work, I would never in this lifetime wish to meet him.

While it is said, "Life is in the details," sometimes to many details clog the creative process and in the end, more goes in than gets out and before you know it, we'll all be left brain dead.

I would like to see the day when funding is balanced between preparedness and prediction. Today, neither one of them are receiving funding in the ways that they need to be; those which influence preparing and forecasting, each to the full benefit of the public, which is quite needy in both.

Petra Challus
Copyright@Challus Media 2002

• The Seismic Safety Zone