Hi Michael,

What is the difference between hazard mitigation and human mitigation? What's more important, you, or the 30 story building down the road? Those federal dollars, are our dollars and if we want people to survive and live through and earthquake disaster, then I think its ok to tell them where one prefers to have our money spent.

The USGS has an outreach program from every one of their offices. I received over 100 hand-outs from them recently, free of charge. So if they can make hand outs, why not video's? Every government concern that has to do with geo-sciences has an outreach program. The only problem is that "they don't outreach", we have to reach out to them.

Michael, its ten minutes to midnight on the earthquake clock. Millions of people live in CA in destructive earthquake zones. Time is of the essence and unless someone takes the bull by the horns and educates as many as possible to get ready, the need for assistance is going to be so great, you can't even begin to imagine it.

FEMA is a reactive organization. They know disasters will happen, they plan for them, but they react either before, with hurricane warnings, or after an earthquake. Not before.
While mind you, I asked Groat to include FEMA in the video's and suggested he have someone to tell the public what FEMA can and cannot do after a disaster.

Believe me, every day we get closer to the big one and before you know it, its going to happen. Not that it has to be a big one, it can be a five in some unfortunate spot and it still seems like the big one.

The costs to make the video's are absolutely minimal and I'm sure with the support of public TV and perhaps some humanitarian foundation the education that holds one together, during and after, could be because someone took some time before it was to late.

1933 Long Beach, lots of damage, schools collapsed and someone thought we should have better building codes. Wa la, The Field Act. Say thank you.

Petra