Hi John. Unfortunately your right. One quake may trigger another quake through movement along one fault by transferring stress from one fault to the other, or in some cases by removing some of the stress that will cause the other fault to move.

Without sufficient knowledge of the amount of stress that has accumulated and how much is needed to overcome the resistance to movement the “when” part of a quake can never be determined accurately enough to be of any benefit to people.

The documentary “Earthquake Storms” shows the “where” part of the next earthquake fairly accurately, but not the when. A rough estimate can be made, but as to how good this will be remains to be seen. The people of Izmit, Turkey were told about a year before the quake struck that the area could have a powerful quake. Yet during the time from when they were told until the time the quake occurred no one made preparations for that quake.

“Prof Geoffrey King was fascinated by the cyclic behavior of the North Anatolian fault in northern Turkey. Earthquakes in the region moved from east to west with a period of quiet at the end before the cycle began again. King used the same model that had been used to show the connection between the quakes in Landers and Big Bear. The first earthquake King looked at was in the northern city of Erzican in 1939. Using the available data on that quake he found that a town to the west called Tokat was in the red, danger zone. Tokat was indeed struck by a quake in 1942. The model seemed to be working. In 1967 Adapazari, also in a red zone, was hit. It looked like stress generated in one earthquake was being transferred to the west. These could not be aftershocks as they were separated by years, not hours.”

“As King continued to put data into the model he discovered that a city called Izmit seemed to be the next place that would be struck. With a population of 500,000 people King and other scientists knew they needed to make this discovery public knowledge.”

“Newspapers, science journals and other publications all printed this remarkable news. Unfortunately there was not enough interest from the local community. In August 1999 King was tragically proved right when a massively energetic earthquake lasting just 45 seconds killed 25,000 people.”

Using the same program shows the next location that could be hit with a major quake is Istanbul. Knowing the where is a good start, but by not knowing the when can the government and the people themselves be motivated into making preparations for the next quake? The time gap between the quakes is 3, 25 and 32 years. Is there a clue there? The program that Prof. King used seems to work for the North Anatolian fault, but will it work for other faults? How about the types of faults? Will it work for subduction faults as well? Only time and more major quakes to study may provide some answers. Take Care…Don in creepy town