As you said, this is a conversational forum. And I intentionally said that “it is my expectation” to indicate that my comments should not be regarded as established fact. We can’t word everything in these notes in strict legal terms. No one could ever post anything. However, my statements were largely based on news reports that I read after the Haiti earthquake that I believe I remember stated repeatedly that scientists felt that the release of strain in the Haiti fault system could result in strain being transferred to the Dominican Republic fault zone system.

In any case, what I considered important was your comment related to building construction in the Dominican Republic possibly being not much better than what was found in Haiti. I am not questioning that. But I had not heard that before and considered the news to be a warning that there could be serious problems if a powerful earthquake were to occur in that country.

I have an earthquake forecasting contact who lives in Haiti and spends some of his time in the Dominican Republic. And when time permits I am going to try to contact him and see if he can provide more details about building construction down there. Hopefully he will state that those conditions are found in only certain areas rather than most of the country. And if I do hear from him on this I will try to post another note discussing what he said.