John beat me to those comments. So, I'll just comment that, yes, of course the Chinese got the idea to look at precursors from EQF web site and that they totally forgot their major prediction program that has been going on since at least the 1970s when there was a prediction of the 1975 Haicheng earthquake that saved lives (see link). The deadly relatively nearby Tangshan quake of 1976 was not predicted. The 1975 quake had lots of foreshocks, the 1976 quake did not. There was a published paper on the 1975 quake prediction in BSSA showing a picture of rats on telephone wires/electric wires. Funny, I saw the same thing in New orleans in the early 1980s and that quake has not occurred yet. I see that from squirrels all the time.

But, sure, there wss probably real odd behavior before the 1975 quake related to the foreshocks (half frozen snakes coming out of their holes, for example). Maybe such programs are useful where there are few instruments and an organized system (marine life would certainly have felt the M7.2 Japan foreshock and all its aftershocks before the M9 (as did people onshore).

Relating the Chinese prediction efforts to EQF website is like relating inspections of nuclear plants to my recent posts here...the NRC must just have someone watching this page all the time and they could not have thought of it themselves that maybe they needed to look into safety.

Chris

• Chinese quakes