In relative terms history suggests that you could be right. Compared to the tremendous number of lives that have been lost, relatively few will be saved. But if you were one of the few who were pulled out of the rubble in time or had some life saving medical care you would probably consider even those meager successes to be the greatest thing in the world.

In addition to the evacuation consideration, you need to look at this in terms of how the disaster mitigation groups work. They aren’t like the fire department with the ability to instantly travel or fly to some location and start saving lives. They need some time to get their personnel contacted, their equipment organized, get passport matters settled, secure transportation, and feed the rescue dogs.

If a timely earthquake warning can save them even one hour of that preparation time then that can be translated into saved lives. Reports say that the first few hours after the earthquake are the most critical. And the disaster groups don’t have to even need a location for the earthquake or any information regarding its magnitude. If they simply know that they may need to respond to an earthquake in the next few days then they can make some preliminary plans for getting equipment organized. People can be contacted and advised to keep watch for developments.

My earthquake advisory was circulated by E-mail and posted in plenty of time for disaster mitigation groups to get preparations underway. I doubt that any did make use of the information. But things are gradually getting more organized. My Charts and Maps can now be generated quickly and efficiently. And I am starting to talk with international disaster mitigation personnel in order to get them better organized. I am also planning to try to get them to establish a bulletin board for serious forecasters and researchers to use where they can compare notes without having to deal with the types of agenda driven intimidating remarks that are being constantly posted here.