Hi All. Over the years I have been slowly but surely coming to the conclusion that people don’t know what the Hell they want.

Twenty-five years ago USGS was criticized for not evacuating the Mount Saint Helens area. Then they were criticized for suggesting that the Mammoth Lakes area might be evacuated because of the increase in seismic activity there.

Then in December of 2004 the Tsunami Warning Center was criticized for not issuing a warning for a tsunami in the Sumatra area and are being sued because of that. Now they are being criticized for issuing a tsunami warning for the M>7.2 quake off the coast of Northern California. One city evacuated 4000 people. This was Crescent City in Northern California. They did so because 11 people were killed from the tsunamis generated by the 1964 Alaska earthquake. They fully understood the need to evacuate now instead of waiting to see if a tsunami was triggered.

People are quick to criticize USGS for not making any earthquake predictions. What these people don’t know and I don’t think they want to know is that the goal for earthquake prediction is a precise prediction for a specific area and a specific time for a large, major, or great quake with a probability of better then 90%. To many false alarms people will start ignoring any and all predictions.

USGS isn’t the only organization with this goal. Just about every organization that has taken on the task of predicting earthquakes has this goal. Anything less is useless. To say a large quake is going to hit Southern California soon just doesn’t get it done. Don in creepy town