Hi Don - I do agree in that the money is better spent on infrastructure rather than trying to predict - I heard Kerry Seih talk and suggest that if we retrofit 1% of structures every year, we'd be safe from earthquakes within 100 years and not build on top of faults (opps - watch those blind thrust faults!)

The idea is to build in harmony with nature as its the buildings that kill and not the earthquake.

But - I think we still need to pursue the earthquake forecasting issue - there are other factors to consider like tsunamis and landslides and such that even building correctly for eathquakes won't help if one of those comes along. Building isn't 100% effective either as we have seen in countries like Turkey and Algeria. Greed is probably the cause in more deaths from quakes in shoddy construction than lack of building codes or engineering knowledge.

Canie