Earthquake Prediction--Chinese Style

Not even one person was killed during a major earthquake that struck a heavily populated area 400 miles northeast of Peking, China, on February 4, 1975. Ninety percent of the buildings in some areas were destroyed as was the entire town of Haicheng. Death was avoided because the government evacuated the nearly one million people who lived in the area.

The Chinese government had mounted a major seismological research program some years earlier. It involved geologic field work, gravity and magnetic studies and observations of crustal deformation using seismic nets and hordes of trained amateur observers. By 1974 Chinese seismologists were convinced that a potentially disastrous earthquake would occur in the Haicheng area. Then sudden changes in water well levels, abnormal behavior of domestic animals and even snakes emerging from below ground in subzero weather plus instrumental indications implied the earthquake was imminent. Massive evacuations were completed just hours before the earthquake struck.

Could this success story be repeated in Alaska? Two things are required--a massive research effort and development of an acceptable means of evacuation or preparation. Do we have the will and the organization?