President Bush Ignored San Andreas Fault Warnings
September 4th, 2004

President Bush was accused today of not doing enough to prepare the country for the looming San Andreas Fault disasters. The same seismologists that failed to predict the devastating earthquakes that rocked the Los Angeles basin in 1994 and the Bay Area in 1989 have now for months been predicting a major quake along the desert�s slice of the San Andreas.

At the annual Seismological Society of America conference held in April of this year, one forecaster predicted a 6.4 magnitude or greater quake in the desert by Sept. 5th of 2004. Another researcher indicated the San Andreas fault is set to enter a period of especially frequent and more intense shaking.

Here we have two warnings, one very specific and one warning of a prolonged thread to the United State's left coast, and this administration has done nothing to prepare its people.

At this year's conference, the highly respected University of Oregon professor Ray Weldon who has spent 18 years studying the San Andreas faults warned, "That is going to be about the center of the rupture if we are all right." Weldon's opinion was backed up by Russian scientist Vladimir Keilis-Borok who also predicted the upwards of 6.4 magnitude quakes.

The studies showing high levels of stress, suggesting a period of strain release, via earthquakes, have been ignored. The earthquake prediction window, a mathematical formula based on past seismic activity used Keilis-Borok and his team has never been reviewed by the Bush administration. Technologies for forecasting earthquake dates back to the late 1970s and early 1980s.

In 1988 in response to a high-profile earthquake prediction Rich Eisner, manager of earthquake programs for the California Office of Emergency Services, recalls trekking to the tiny California town of Parkfield were researchers predicted a major temblor would occur in the area within a three-day window.

Even though the quake never materialized, the Office of Emergency Services still has an earthquake response plan it formed around the time of the old prediction. "From our standpoint, it was a productive and successful exercise," Eisner said. It is important to note that President Bush failed to duplicate this exercise in an effort to combat the emerging predictable crisis.

The American people have a right to know about the shroud of irresponsibility that has cloaked this administration. The people should be warned that if they were hoping for the government to take decisive preemptive action to save lives and reduce the destructive impact of these easily predictable natural events that they will in fact be disappointed.

Tomorrow is Sept. 5th and you the great people of the United States haven't even been warned. For shame Mr. Bush.

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