EQF, if it was not for the emails you sent Canie and Roger, I would have wondered why not the M6.7 earthquake at Vanuatu on March 9? There is a M6+ quake every 2 or 3 days somewhere in the world. Yes, M6.9 is close to a 7 and there are only 1 or 2 a month for M7+. But, you posted stuff is rarely very date specific and you have a very long history of claiming success on whatever quake comes along next. So, you've lost credibility.

The below is more directed at "lurkers" who may be interested than at EQF.

OK, as far as "new Cabinet Level government agency that specializes in disaster prevention and management."

Isn't that what FEMA does? There are lots of USGS people working on problems of earthquakes but as far as "disaster mitigation professionals", depending on what that means, it does not sound like what USGS does, but it is done. It is done by engineers, states, and probably FEMA or other federal agencies. USGS has biologists (including my daughter as an intern), but ,ay not have many engineers. Geologists and geophysicists do not have the training to design earthquake resistant buildings. Over the last 5 years there have been posters and oral presentations at the annual SCEC meeting by engineers (example, Swami Krisna) and seismologist Tom Heaton, who may be USGS, has been very involved in safety of buildings. USGS and University professors who are considered geophysicists both work with strong ground motion modeling. I've posted in the past that this modeling uses (if I remember correctly) 100s of thousands of computer processors. Ground motion is strongly affected by site conditions and maps are made by geologists and geophysicists.

If you understand the faults (that is what I do), and you understand the site conditions, and you incorporate this in ground motion modeling, and you know what the building stock is, then you know what your building codes should be and what bridges etc need retrofitting.

As far as preparedness, SCEC including USGS have had the annual "Shakeout" drills in California in which millions participate (although I think the counting is likely pretty liberal: if a university participates and a University has 30,000 students and staff, then 30,000 people are counted?

Chris