Martin - I just went to a talk tonight given at CalTech - The speaker, Kerry Sieh, is a well known paleoseismologist and has been working at CalTech for years now. He was asked about earthquake prediction and used the words 'prediction' and 'forecast' interchangably in his answers. There was no distinction at all between the words.

His main emphasis is to re-evaluate land use - don't build ON the faults - use the fault area as a golf course or track or amusement park or agriculture or some such so when it does go that the damage is less. Also mitigate the area - If 1% of a hazardous site is mitigated per year, in 100 years we will all be safe.

Canie