Hi All,

As things are a little slow in the world of seismic activity, I thought I'd like to share the story of a courageous woman with you. This woman, is a true lady in every respect, a woman I admire and one whom through her own careful documentation has brought proof to the scientific community that the phenomenon of geyser activity is a precursor to seismic activity.

The woman I'm referencing is Olga Kolbeck, who owns the Old Faithful Geyser of Calistoga, California. I met Olga about three years ago and spent about an hour and a half, interviewing her and I loved every minute I spent with her. At that time I could see her greatest asset was her charming personality. She absolutely loved to greet the visitors who came and gave them her own personal account of her life living with a geyser and made everyone who came feel special.

She was raised in the mid-west and though a good student, one who rather was a disturbance at the same time. In high school she occasionally offered to help the home economics teacher and found this a real pleasure and eventually the school allowed her the opportunity to be part of this class.

Early on she felt a good diet, exercise, and holistic living were foremost in life. When she finished college, she married a military man and moved to Panama and taught school there until her husband was killed in a routine military exercise that was non-combat related. She moved back to the mid-west after his death and married again and continued teaching school and lost this husband through a health problem. However, she never had any children from these marriages.

In time she traveled to Sonoma County and was looking for a property where she could open a health spa and she located the property in Calistoga where the geyser is today. Having assurances from the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors that she could open a health spa there, she went back home, to Texas and put her own property up for sale. Oddly, one night a man in a large Cadillac showed up in the late evening and informed her the sale on the property in Calistoga was off and offered to refund her money. She refused and the case got tied up in court for about a year and half. By the time she finally secured her place the Board of Supervisors had changed and the assurance that she could open her health spa was set aside by the new board and the long hard battle to her dream died.

I can recall seeing the Calistoga Geyser about thirty years ago before she made any changes to the property. It was simply a little building with a place where you could drive up, park and watch the geyser erupt. At that time the eruption was spectacular. The amount of water emerging from the spout was enormous compared to today, which is more like a rather large spray.

As her dream for the health spa was set aside, she took up teaching home economics at Petaluma Junior High School. I had the pleasure of working with one of her students after meeting Olga and the woman told me that Olga was way ahead of her time in teaching natural remedies for health problems. One was simply drinking flat cola to relieve an upset stomach.

But from the moment she obtained the property she started keeping daily logs of the time intervals between the eruptions of the geyser. When the time intervals changed from ten minutes apart to hours apart, she learned that within three days moderate to large earthquakes would occur within 200 miles of geyser. She found it interesting and in time met Jim Berkland. He encouraged her to continue her daily logging process and she often advised him when dramatic changes occurred.

As her geyser location could not become a health spa, she eventually built a larger building on the property, closed off the open space and installed a seismograph and began to charge an entrance fee to see the geyser. Today it also has a display that was installed by a Russian scientist about geysers and volcanic eruptions and better yet, thanks to Dr. Paul Silver her twenty five years of data logging finally found some good use.

Silver took all of her data and computerized the information, installed electronic sensors to monitor the geyser twenty-four hours a day and a computer inside of the office to digitally monitor the geyser's behavior. Every day the information on the geyser activity is streamed to Silver at Carnegie Institute.

There are three frequently revealed earthquakes which were preceded by a change in the geyser:

08/01/75 5.9 Oroville
08/06/79 5.9 Gilroy
10/17/89 7.1 Loma Prieta

Today Olga is in her nineties and unable to come to the geyser and greet her guests. I admire her greatly for her valuable contributions in life. First and foremost as a teacher who taught her students more than how to make a meal, but how to live a healthy holistic life. But one who in the interim became a scientific researcher and offered a second and equally valuable contribution in her dedication to logging the data of the Calistoga geysers behavior.

Some day when the time is right, I'll tell you the story about Jim Berkland. Though I know he is a controversial personality, he is also a man who really loves people and one who's very easy to love as a friend.

From the road less traveled, Petra Challus