Hi Chris,

You don't know me very well and know little about my successful past in fund raising and mostly you are apparently unaware that I have impecable manners.

I am very well connected in city and congressional circles, yet some people I've met in the science community have the manners of something less than a dog. Some are outright rude, arrogant and even do things in public a child has been instructed not to do.

Let us go back to square one. Almost every institution or government sponsored organization has an Outreach program, but the problem is that Outreach isn't Outreach until you "reach out" and do something with the information you supposedly have for the public. Thus is the case of the USGS. While they can fund Parkfield to the tune of One Million a year on overhead and expenses, they can't afford a few dollars to place some earthquake preparedness materials there. So I do it. I collect brochures from insurance companies and print my own. People pick them up, say they are glad to have them and take them home. They've told me they thought it was a good idea in a place called The Earthquake Capital of The World. We must also recall that one segment of the Parkfield Earthquake Prediction Project was in teaching earthquake preparedness.

While I have no problem with people going out and mapping seismic risk zones to death, I do have a problem with the focus being "Hello, You're sitting on a death throne." And that's it. There is a point between what geophysical people do and how the public lives with the knowledge of what is there and the point is to say, "Yes, indeed there is a problem here and if you're going to live here, then this is what you need to do, Prepare!"

People who live in seismic risk zones are the least informed people in the USA in regard to being warned. While others have tornado warnings, hurricane warnings, flood warnings, terrorist warnings, in our area, nothing. You can't even buy a house and be told the truth about what you're going to live upon. Why, because the map isn't finished and if the map isn't finished, you don't live in a seismic risk zone. How convenient. To bad the flood maps are all done. In free style living in California we are told that after a toranado sighting, even with live footage, it was a "wind vortex." See, we can't even have tornado's here.

There is no budget for the USGS to make any preparedness materials for the public. This to me seems strange. While our tax dollars afford people an opportunity to find out where the problem is, we cannot have a modicum of a budget to tell people how to live with the problem. There used to be a budget, but its not important anymore, so its each person on their own, with one exception and I'm it.

If I have to fund it myself, then fund it myself I will. But believe me when I say, I would never in my life ask a scientist for a dime. It would be beneath me to do so. While I've spent my $400 a year to attend the AGU and support it with my $30 membership fee, I've also done my part in making sure that every person who buys homeowners insurance which crosses my desk understands all they need to know to make an informed choice about whether they buy it or not.

Preparedness starts with a mental frame of mind because someone placed a reminder in front of them. Statistically, it takes 3 times before a person receives information before they will act upon it. Therefore, saying something only once will not produce results. It takes a consistent effort. Do you know that with a modest budget of $5,000, Public Service Announcements could be produced and aired free on TV and radio. Just imagine, a little reminder that might even be humorous might be the one that makes that person store a little water, or know to hang out with the bread and chips in the grocery store instead of running straight toward the largest panes of glass in a building.

Did you ever hear the joke about Jack and Tom? Jack was looking to meet a surfer girl and was told to go to Sunset Beach and meet Sue Nami at 11 o'clock on Sunday. But when Jack and Tom arrived the beach was empty. After seeing a large wave approaching they realized, they had the wrong kind of date in mind, but it was Tsunami.

Hey, I just want people to survive earthquakes and if the government can lend a hand in doing so, it will work better. But you can't get blood from a stone, so I'm not going to try anymore. They can do their thing their way and I'll do my thing, my way. They can map and I'll get them ready.

Petra