October 30, 2006

The following is most of the text of an earthquake warning update which was just posted to the sci.geo.earthquakes Internet Newsgroup and several others. The update also included some comments for U.S. voters who live near earthquake fault zones.

Strong earthquake warning type signals are still being detected. And a significant earthquake is still expected. My Data.html Web page has once again been updated.

What the data on my Web page say is that in cases where there are quite a few earthquakes listed which have about the same longitude, I recommend that earthquake researchers living along that longitude line check their own precursor data to see if any are suggesting that an earthquake could be approaching. Because of the way that earthquakes are triggered and the way that my location determination calculations are done, latitudes in those data tables are accurate only some of the time.

In recent data tables there have been longitude entries for both Italy and Peru areas. And news reports have stated that strongly felt earthquakes recently occurred in or near both of those countries.

EARTHQUAKE FORECASTING AND THE NOVEMBER 7, 2006 U.S. ELECTIONS

The following comments are mainly for U.S. residents who live near earthquake fault zones.

On November 7, 2006, voters across the U.S. will go to the polls and cast ballots for quite a few candidates for government office. Every two years like this U.S. voters have a chance to ask people running for national office what they plan to do about different things which are important to them.

Here are three questions for people living near earthquake fault zones.

1. How many of you asked your local candidates what they were planning to do to get more effective earthquake forecasting programs developed?

2. During the past year, can you remember hearing of even one person living in your area who asked any candidate running for office what he or she planned to do to get more effective earthquake forecasting programs developed or to protect you from earthquakes in some other way such as by getting more funding approved for research on safer building construction methods?

3. If your answers to those two questions are “0” and “No” as is probably the case for the vast majority of U.S. residents living near fault zones, then how can you expect that anything is going to get done along those lines?

With some humor intended I will propose that in the office of every candidate and elected official here in the U.S. there hangs an invisible sign which quotes the well known saying that “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.”

Earthquakes don’t occur where I live. And if I were to ask my local candidates what they were planning to do to improve our forecasting abilities etc. they would simply state that this is not an important issue for their constituents.

If you live near an earthquake fault zone and you did not ask your own local candidates those types of questions during the past year, then in all honesty, how could you blame them or anyone else if an earthquake were to occur near you and you had no warning about it?

It appears to me that most U.S. West Coast and New Madrid fault zone area voters once again let their local candidates for office have a free pass on this important subject. And now they will have to wait another two years for the next opportunity to get them to make any commitments along those lines.

These are personal opinions.