Just scanned the current news report on the Guatemala quake with as-of-this-writing 48 dead, and read of one account where a little girl was crushed by a falling wall.

And a thought occurred to me - would quake prediction have saved this girl's life?

Let's say for the sake of argument that someone had a 100% reliable method of predicting mag 5+ quakes at least 3-5 days in advance.

What next? So much has to happen in between the 'prediction center' and that little girl's family to potentially save her life.

A message has to get to the local authorities. That's gonna have to go from the Prediction Center to the US gov (assuming it was based here just for arguments sake). Then our gov would have to contact the nations in the affected area. That would likely go through the ambassadors. Then those ambassadors have to tell their government. Then that government has to notify it's citizens. It would go from the national government to the local levels, and then to the streets.

But, in many susceptible countries the locals may not have any means of receiving word from the government in a timely fashion. If it's a more remote village, they may not have TV, radio, electricity, telephone.

And, say it's a big quake. A 7.8 mag shallow killer. That's going to affect a LOT of people. Even if you can tell every last soul, what do they do? Sure, they can move out of dangerous buildings and secure valuable resources. But the buildings are still going to come down. Infrastructure such as roads, power lines, and water lines will still be destroyed. People will still need shelter, still need food, and some will still need medical care for indirect quake related issues. People will still die because they cannot get the resources they need to survive after the quake.

I guess my point is that I'm frustrated at the idea of 'quake predictors' pushing so danged hard to get quake prediction off the ground when they don't seem to have thought about anything else. At least, I've not noticed any of them addressing what I just brought up. Even if quakes can be predicted, we still have to reinforce the infrastructure in order to keep it from being damaged by these quakes. What good is it if everyone survives in a city completely decimated? These tasks still need to be done whether we can or cannot predict those quakes.

It seems to me that those folks think quake prediction will be a panacea solving all the problems associated with quakes. It isn't. Everything else that goes along with quakes will still have to be resolved and prepared for. So although it's noble to want to predict quakes and potentially save lives, there is so much more work that needs to be done now and CAN be done now to save lives even WITHOUT quake prediction.

Brian