I'm a bit late on this conversation and it seems that the story isn't online there anymore - I've been dealing with some personal business.

As to the F16 that went down - a friend of mine works at the Lockheed plant in Palmdale and their photographer was on board - She told me that the F-16's are equipped with anti EM (electromagnetic) devices and EM fields do not affect the instrumentation at all - so I doubt that there was any relationship of the crash to the quakes - just coincidence.

Canie