Forecasting earthquakes involves much the same as forecasting other natural disasters such as tornados, hurricanes, and floods. It is even much the same as forecasting rain or prolonged hot, dry weather. The reason the topics you discussed have not already been agreed on is the fact that there have just not been any consistent earthquake forecasting methods available. So people have never had to actually sit down and try to decide what needs to be done when an earthquake warning is circulated.

Several things are probably near the top of the response list:

1. Get people out of buildings that might collapse. And I agree that better building codes are a high priority. But realistically, in many countries they will not be put into practice for probably decades if that soon. After several devastating earthquakes in Turkey back in 1999 they vowed to build safer buildings. But then they reportedly quickly returned to building unsafe buildings to save money and because of greed and corruption. So the only universal option that could work is to forecast the earthquakes in the first place and get people out of their way.

2. With even a few minutes warning people can shut down electric power lines and natural gas and liquid fuel underground pipelines and even water mains. That can help keep those devastating fires from getting started when the earthquake occurs. It is my understanding that with the January, 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, most of the people died as a result of fires that broke out during the earthquake, not from falling buildings.

3. With a few hours warning people could prepare for those massive tsunamis (tidal waves). Had they had time the operators of that nuclear power plant in Japan could have safely shut down all the nuclear reactors before the earthquake and tsunami hit them. Then the power plant and surrounding areas might have been saved from all of that devastation. And I understand that one of the reactors is still considered as being out of control. It is not expected to be back in a safe condition for another ten years!

It is my opinion that my data and data from other researchers clearly show that we could be accurately forecasting many of our powerful earthquakes right now. But it is like opening a combination lock. If you don’t know the combination you can spin the dial for years without success. If you don’t know what type of precursor data to process you can predict earthquakes endlessly and have few or no successes. Unfortunately, the scientists and government officials around the world who are supposed to be doing this work don’t seem to be the least bit interested in making any progress. That method where people use the time delay between two different types of earthquake waves to circulate warnings is definitely something to work on. But it can provide only a limited amount of advance warning for just some people. And it is apparently quite expensive to put into operation.

These are personal opinions.