Hi Cathryn, That was a sad story to hear.

With regard to earthquake forecasts, if you look around at all of the destructive earthquakes which have occurred over the years you have to admit that very few were accurately or at least effectively predicted. By itself that should be an indication that if they can be predicted then the technology would probably have to be quite complex. And I would say from my own experiences that this is true.

However, I have also said that you can think of the science and technology as representing only 1% of the picture. The other 99% could be thought of as earthquake politics.

Here in the U.S. we can discuss earthquake forecasts fairly openly. No one pays that much attention to them. But the governments of many other countries can get pretty upset when people living there start talking about a possible approaching earthquake.

The EarthWaves board was originally a private e-mail circulation board. You had to be approved for admittance. And conversations about approaching earthquakes could get pretty open and specific. What was discussed stayed largely within the circulation group.

Notes posted to the present EarthWaves board can be and are being read by people around the world. And you have to be a lot more careful about what you say if only to keep governments around the world from getting upset and banning the board from their Internet servers. When the old board made the conversion from a private group to a public bulletin board I stopped posting notes for quite a while until I was able to determine how to discuss these topics in a public forum like this one without having problems develop.