Hi Roger and Skywise,

The matter is more complicated than that.

My database file for earthquakes lists the standard time, latitude, longitude, etc. for the earthquake. But for each entry there are also sun, moon, ocean and Solid Earth Tide data, and for destructive earthquakes the number of people injured, the number of fatalities, and at times even the number of buildings damaged.

The NEIC search lists don't contain those types of information. And at the moment it would be too complicated to redo everything.

One project that I have tried once or twice but have not yet been successful with has been to get the USGS to generate a significant earthquakes table that listed every significant earthquake from their significant earthquakes database files. But each earthquake would be represented by a single line that contained comma separated data for the number of fatalities (if there were any), the number of injuries, the number of buildings damaged, and the estimated damage or repair costs for everything in current US dollars.

That would be easy and logical for them to do as they are already collecting those types of data for their Web site significant earthquakes files. And earthquake researchers and disaster mitigation personnel around the world need that type of information in a database file form that can be read by a spreadsheet program etc. However, they have not prepared such a Web site related list yet as far as I am aware.

Years ago I had to go through their lengthy significant earthquakes files and extract that information from the files one earthquake at a time. I seem to remember that it took me days if not an entire week. Now I just add that information to my database file whenever there is an extremely powerful earthquake or one that produces injuries. The fatal earthquakes are then displayed on my forecasting charts as red triangles.